Snort. I hope someone on the D's side is taking notes. Via Taegan-
Nearly one-third of Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty's (R) final budget proposal would rely on $387 million in federal stimulus money to balance the budget, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Pawlenty opposed passage of the economic stimulus legislation early last year telling Bloomberg it was "largely wasted" and "misdirected."
You know what to blame for this? The middle class tax cut that the majority of Americans didn't (and don't) even realize they got. The last time the President mentioned it, even Jeff didn't know what he was talking about, his check gets direct deposited and he never even noticed he was having less taken out in taxes. I would think those people who overwhelmingly get paper checks and scrutinize the deductions are the ones who know they got a cut.
Perceptions of the effectiveness of President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package differ dramatically between racial groups, according to a new poll released Tuesday.
The poll, sponsored by New America Media, a corroboration of 2,500 ethnic media outlets, reported that less than 40 percent of whites, Hispanics and Native Americans said the stimulus has made the economy better, compared to 59 percent of African-Americans and 47 percent of Asian-Americans.
(snip)
In total, 54 percent said the stimulus package has been ‘a good thing for their family or local community’ while 27 percent said it was ‘a bad thing’ and 19 percent either did not know or had no opinion.
Only 45 percent of the white Americans polled, however, thought the stimulus has been a good thing compared to 36 percent who think it was a bad thing. But among African Americans, 84 percent said the stimulus was a good thing and only 4 percent said the opposite.
Hispanics, Native Americans and Asian Americans all polled above 60 percent in concluding that the stimulus was a good thing.
Asian-Americans trailed the other two groups, with 62 percent concluding that the stimulus was a good thing, 10 percent saying it was a bad thing and 28 percent did not know or had no opinion. Hispanics and Native Americans polled identically at 67 percent good, 11 percent bad and 22 percent did not know or had no opinion.
By GottaLaff
The numbers would be even worse but for the stimulus package. According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, the stimulus is saving or creating between 200,000 and 250,000 jobs a month. Without it, job losses in September would have been nearly twice what they actually were.Yeah, but Prez O lost out on the Olympics bid. What an utter failure.
Hutchinson is going to have some fun with this, I can see the ads already.
Earlier this year, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) "was one of a handful of Republican governors who refused some federal stimulus funds from President Obama's economic recovery package on the grounds that there were too many strings attached to the money," CBS News reports.
"Now that the state is dire straits, however, Perry is asking the federal government for a loan to cover the very expenses the rejected stimulus money would have paid for."
You knew this was going to happen. Damned if you do...
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday that President Obama's stimulus package would have little, if any, impact on the economy — and re-stated his opposition to including any public option in the upcoming health care overhaul.
“I’m very skeptical that the spending binge that we’re on is going to produce much good and, even if it does, anytime soon, " said McConnell. "And I think the economy is just as likely to begin to recover on its own, wholly aside from this, before much of this has an impact. So I’m very skeptical that this massive sort of spending binge that we’ve engaged in is going to have much of an impact.”
By GottaLaff
UPDATE-- Here's the February article:Famously, Maine Senator Susan Collins, the supposedly moderate Republican who demanded cuts in health care spending in exchange for her support of a watered-down version of the stimulus, fumed about the pandemic funding: "Does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill No, we should not."
Yes, we should have.
Even now, Collins continues to use her official website to highlight the fact that she led the fight to strip the pandemic preparedness money out of the Senate's version of the stimulus measure.We'll be right back after this short break, brought to you by Maine's burgeoning dry cleaning industry:
Stimulus bill headed for passage minus pandemic funds
By GottaLaff
GOP is filibustering the confirmation of the Secretary of HHS in the midst of swine flu preparations
When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year's emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.
Obey and other advocates for the spending argued, correctly, that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse [...]
The current swine flu outbreak is not a pandemic, and there is reason to hope that it can be contained. [...]
On Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that a national "public health emergency" had been declatred. (Notably, the second question at the White House press conference on the emergency had to do with the potential impact on the economic recovery.) [...]
Rove dismissed Obey's proposals as "disturbing" and "laden with new spending programs." He said the congressman was peddling a plan based on "deeply flawed assumptions."
Like what?
Rove specifically complained that Obey's proposal included "$462 million for the Centers for Disease Control, and $900 million for pandemic flu preparations."
We interrupt our regularly scheduled blot post to bring you breaking news. We have found the source of the swine flu outbreak:
Now back to our blog post already in progress:
The attack on pandemic preparation became so central to the GOP strategies that AP reported in February: "Republicans, meanwhile, plan to push for broader and deeper tax cuts, to trim major spending provisions that support Democrats' longer-term policy goals, and to try to knock out what they consider questionable spending items, such as $870 million to combat the flu and $400 million to slow the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases."
Famously, Maine Senator Susan Collins, the supposedly moderate Republican who demanded cuts in health care spending in exchange for her support of a watered-down version of the stimulus, fumed about the pandemic funding: "Does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill No, we should not."
Yes, we should have.
Even now, Collins continues to use her official website to highlight the fact that she led the fight to strip the pandemic preparedness money out of the Senate's version of the stimulus measure.
We'll be right back after this short break, brought to you by Maine's burgeoning dry cleaning industry:
Now, back to our post:
Thank you for joining us. Tune in again next week when we discover that despite Donald Rumsfeld's stake in Tamiflu, he has been foolish enough to maintain his relationship with a Mexican pig named Karlos Rovero, and, to his surprise and dismay, contracted a nasty case of the swine flu.The Republicans essentially succeeded. The Senate version of the stimulus plan included no money whatsoever for pandemic preparedness. [...]
[S]tate and local governments, and the emergency services that would necessarily be on the frontlines in any effort to contain a pandemic, got nothing.[...]
No serious player in Washington has been unaware of the fears with regard to a flu pandemic. They have been well-publicized and well-discussed. [...]
And it is important to point out that no serious player in Washington could have been unaware of the threat that a pandemic -- or even the fear of one -- would pose to economic renewal. [...]
But they bet that they would be able to score their political points without any consequences.
Senate Democratic leaders bowed to Collins in the process of crafting their chamber's version of the stimulus. [...]
Collins played politics with public health, and the economic recovery. That makes her about as bad a player as you will find in a town full of bad players.
But Senate Democrats bent to her demands. That makes them, at the very least, complicit in the weakening of what needed to be a muscular plan.[...]
There is, however, a hero on the House side. Throughout the process, David Obey battled to get Congress to recognize that a pandemic would threaten not just public health but a fragile economic recovery.
No clue what they're doing, just lashing out.
BATON ROUGE - Louisiana's transportation department plans to request federal dollars for a New Orleans to Baton Rouge passenger rail service from the same pot of railroad money in the president's economic stimulus package that Gov. Bobby Jindal criticized as unnecessary pork on national television Tuesday night.
The high-speed rail line, a topic of discussion for years, would require $110 million to upgrade existing freight lines and terminals to handle a passenger train operation, said Mark Lambert, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development.
Jindal on Tuesday delivered the official Republican Party response to President Barack Obama's address to Congress. He criticized the stimulus package passed by the Democratic-majority in Congress and the president and noted examples of projects that he found objectionable.
"While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending," Jindal said. "It includes ... $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a 'magnetic levitation' line from Las Vegas to Disneyland."
By GottaLaff
[W]e felt compelled to leave it implicitly clear that Jindal had apparently found the ideal number that would give him some shred of credibility with the neo-Hooverite right while also allowing him to get through his term as governor without getting impeached.The $98 million amounts to less than 2% of Louisiana's total take. And, per Josh Marshall, "alot of it doesn't go through him in the first place."
By GottaLaff
It's all a ruse by Sanford and Perry. One, they can refuse all the money and their state legislatures can override them, which they'll do. Or they can just refuse some tiny project and claim they rejected the wasteful money while accepting 98% of it.Mark included Buzzflash's Hypocrite of the Week post, starring Lindsey Graham. Here are a few excerpts:
Thank you, Mark, for passing all that along.Talk about foreclosing on a bakery and then demanding a free cake. That's what most Republicans who voted against the "Main Street Job Creation Act" -- denouncing it as just short of Satanic -- are doing for the most part. They are now crowing about what all that "wasted" money will do to benefit their home states or districts.
Take Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The Neo-Confederate U.S. Senator is wasting no time in boasting about bringing home the bacon when just a few short days ago, he was denouncing a jobs creation bill as pork. [...]In essence, Graham is saying he opposed the "Main Street Job Creation Act" even though it would be political suicide not to distribute the money to the voters of his state. He was joined in rabid obstruction of the bill by his fellow Republican, Senator Jim "Stonewall Jackson" DeMint.
As BuzzFlash Editor Mark Karlin proposed a couple of weeks back, the state of any senator who opposed the "Main Street Job Creation Act" should only receive half their allotted funds. If both senators opposed the bill, the state should receive no federal allotment from the legislation.
That way, hypocrites such as Lindsey Graham couldn't grandstand their zealotry and then pass out the goodies that they fought against.
In fact, Graham represents one of the many GOP Neo-Confederate states that receives more money from the federal government than their citizens pay in taxes. That sort of makes South Carolina a welfare state as far as the Union is concerned.
As for Lindsey Graham, he's become a talk show regular spouting GOP talking points -- and then practicing the chronic hypocrisy of being a Republican welfare king for his constituents.
By GottaLaff
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who co-wrote an op-ed piece with South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford about all the things that were wrong with the bill, has now informed the White House that he'll accept the money.It's okay, though, he's only taking some of the money. That makes him, what, half a hypocrite?
See? Qualifiers make all the difference. I think I'll go rob part of a bank, so I don't get sent to, you know, prison.Perry is, however, leaving the door open to not taking all of it, as he doesn't want to spend money that would expand existing social programs, and thus trap him into having to continue the increases later on with state money.
By GottaLaff
Via Think Progress:
As the Wonk Room points out, “the stimulus is no substitute for health reform. Congress must now turn the page to reforming the health care system, dragging conservatives kicking and screaming across the finish line.”This one is close to my heart. One of my kids has Crohn's Disease and takes 13 pills a day. Our insurance bills are around $20,000 a year. (We used to be covered by Writers Guild, but no more, for various reasons.) I won't go into all the details, but you get the picture. And yes, we have COBRA. So...
By GottaLaff
White House photographer Peter Souza noticed something that you won't see on the Tee Vee Machine:
The sharpest message of the bunch, however, comes with a photo of Obama being approached by Republican lawmakers after a meeting where he pitched the economic recovery package.
"House Republicans surround the President after the meeting," the caption read. "Many of them were seeking his autograph. Every House Republican eventually voted against the bill."
(In other words: there was one piece of paper they were happy to see him sign.)
They admire him enough to ask for his autograph, but not enough to show him any support whatsoever.
H/t: Ellen
By GottaLaff
With the stimulus victory in hand, Obama planned to shift to the housing crisis with an announcement Wednesday in Phoenix about reversing that sector's collapse.
Late last summer, Americans began feeling the pinch of the recession and left the housing market in huge numbers. That coincided with a sharp increase defaults on home mortgages, a devastating combination that triggered the financial crisis. Lending froze as banks and investment houses realized they were holding trillions of dollars in bad assets.
Under an emergency $700 billion bailout program passed late last year, the Bush administration used half to forestall a financial collapse. But the flow of credit did not ease and use of the money was criticized because it was poorly administered and overseen.
Obama is now working to leverage the second portion of the bailout money into a program that could result in $2 trillion in government and private sector cash infusions to help banks and investment houses clear away "toxic" holdings and thereby spur lending.
As part of the next steps on the bailout, Obama was expected to offer help homeowners on the brink of foreclosure. Details have not been disclosed, but the nature of the crisis suggested mortgage loans would have to be revalued downward along with interest rates.
"We obviously have a major problem: problems with foreclosure, problems with people living on the edge and problems with home values around the country just plummeting, which is affecting family, family finances everywhere," Axelrod said. "We want to do something that will address all of those things."
By GottaLaff
I previously posted about Congress strengthening executive pay limits. Today on the Sunday talk shows, the White House expressed concerns:
The White House is concerned that the stringent limits “could prompt financial institutions to repay the government too quickly.” Financial firm lobbyists are also worried that they will lose personnel, “driving talented employees to companies that aren’t subject to the regulation or to overseas banks.”Well Barney Frank isn't all that concerned. In fact, he's very much in favor of the caps, and good for him (see video). Many of us are relieved that Congress isn't too eager to budge on this one.
Commenting on the issue of “executive compensation,” The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg recently wrote, “I have to say, I get a little dizzy with disgust whenever I hear that word used to describe some C.E.O.’s pay envelope. … What, exactly, are these people being ‘compensated’ for? Are they victims of crime? Or is it the long hours, the loneliness, the inability to spend time with their children—so much more terrible than the plight of a middle-aged immigrant mother working double shifts as an office cleaner?”!
By GottaLaff
Democrats fired back in the rhetorical fight on bipartisanship Sunday, complaining Republicans didn’t support President Obama’s stimulus bill even when their ideas were embraced.Watch Lindsey McDramaQueen's 20-second soliloquy here.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) complained Sunday that even after the Senate voted to accept amendments offered by Republican Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), the GOP senators voted against the bill. [...]
Grassley’s amendment to spare millions of people from having to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax is in the final bill. But Isackson’s housing tax credit was stripped out in conference after initially being adopted by the Senate.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) echoed the point, saying that other Republican senators who voted for the plan got their ideas included. [...]
But Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he knows bipartisanship when he sees it, and he didn’t see it.
By GottaLaff
Frank Rich:
AM I crazy, or wasn’t the Obama presidency pronounced dead just days ago? Obama had “all but lost control of the agenda in Washington,” declared Newsweek on Feb. 4 as it wondered whether he might even get a stimulus package through Congress. [...]Please read the rest here. The excerpts are never enough.
. Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition. The same crowd that said he was a wimpy hope-monger who could never beat Hillary or get white votes was played for fools again. [...]
For Axelrod, the moral is “not just that Washington is too insular but that the American people are a lot smarter than people in Washington think.” [...]
Because Republicans are isolated in that parallel universe and believe all the noise in its echo chamber, they are now as out of touch with reality as the “inevitable” Clinton campaign was before it got clobbered in Iowa. The G.O.P. doesn’t recognize that it emerged from the stimulus battle even worse off than when it started. That obliviousness gives the president the opening to win more ambitious policy victories than last week’s. Having checked the box on attempted bipartisanship, Obama can now move in for the kill. [...]
The stimulus opponents, egged on by all the media murmurings about Obama “losing control,” also thought they had a sure thing. Their TV advantage added to their complacency. As the liberal blog ThinkProgress reported, G.O.P. members of Congress wildly outnumbered Democrats as guests on all cable news networks, not just Fox News, in the three days of intense debate about the House stimulus bill. They started pounding in their slogans relentlessly. The bill was not a stimulus package but an orgy of pork spending. The ensuing deficit would amount to “generational theft.” F.D.R.’s New Deal had been an abject failure. [...]
Perhaps the stimulus held its own because the public, in defiance of Washington’s condescending assumption, was smart enough to figure out that the government can’t create jobs without spending and that Bush-era Republicans have no moral authority to lecture about deficits. Some Americans may even have ancestors saved from penury by the New Deal.
In any event, the final score was unambiguous. The stimulus package arrived with the price tag and on roughly the schedule Obama had set for it. The president’s job approval percentage now ranges from the mid 60s (Gallup, Pew) to mid 70s (CNN) [...]
But the Republicans are busy high-fiving themselves and celebrating “victory.” Even in defeat, they are still echoing the 24/7 cable mantra about the stimulus’s unpopularity. This self-congratulatory mood is summed up by a Wall Street Journal columnist who wrote that “the House Republicans’ zero votes for the Obama presidency’s stimulus ‘package’ is looking like the luckiest thing to happen to the G.O.P.’s political fortunes since Ronald Reagan switched parties.” [...]
This G.O.P., a largely white Southern male party with talking points instead of ideas and talking heads instead of leaders, is not unlike those “zombie banks” that we’re being asked to bail out. It is in too much denial to acknowledge its own insolvency and toxic assets. [...]
As Judd Gregg flakes out and Lindsey Graham throws made-for-YouTube hissy fits on the Senate floor, Obama should stay focused on the big picture in governing as he did in campaigning. That’s the steady course he upheld when much of the political establishment was either second-guessing or ridiculing it, and there’s no reason to change it now. The stimulus victory showed that even as president Obama can ambush Washington’s conventional wisdom as if he were still an insurgent. [...]
The biggest mistake he can make now is to be too timid. This country wants a New Deal, including on energy and health care, not a New Deal lite. Far from depleting Obama’s clout, the stimulus battle instead reaffirmed that he has the political capital to pursue the agenda of change he campaigned on.
Republicans will also be judged by the voters. If they want to obstruct and filibuster while the economy is in free fall, the president should call their bluff and let them go at it. [...] The G.O.P. is so insistent that the New Deal was a mirage it may well have convinced itself that its own sorry record back then didn’t happen either.
By GottaLaff
Whiny little NoNo Repubabies throw things when they're mad:
A simple "nay" vote wasn't enough for Republican Congressman John Boehner this afternoon, as the $787 billion stimulus package headed toward passage: While speaking before C-SPAN cameras, the House leader had to toss all 1,073 pages of the bill onto the august chamber's floor in disgust.Waa-a-ah! Someone go get the Boehner his wittle Boehner Binky.
Holding a massive white stack of paper in his hand, Boehner registered his disdain -- shared by every other Republican House member, all of whom voted against the bill -- by noting that no one has read it. [...]
"Our [Republican] ideas weren't considered," Boehner said. "We weren't allowed in the room. We weren't allowed to participate at all. And all the talk about bipartisanship that we have heard over the last several months went down the drain."
By GottaLaff
The U.S. Congress eliminated billions of dollars for nuclear weapons and nuclear energy from the economic stimulus bill Wednesday.It's issues like those that explain numbers like these:
Of the billions struck from the plan, $1 billion had been set aside for nuclear weapons and $50 billion was reserved for loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants, said the arms control group Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF).In addition to posing a serious threat to humanity, nuclear weapons constitute a significant drain on the United States' financial and scientific resources, writes NAPF in its 10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. [...]
The $50 billion of loan guarantees for nuclear power plants could have led to the construction of a new generation of nuclear power plants at a time when other sources of energy are growing much faster, said environmental groups. [...]
Congress' decision to cut the stimulus money for the nuclear industry translates into a huge success for anti-nuclear groups like NAPF, which has long campaigned "to encourage elected officials to establish policies that will reduce and eliminate the nuclear threat."
[I]f you look at the numbers, congressional Democrats are pretty popular. And congressional Republicans are extremely unpopular. [...] Dems are at about 50% or higher in most recent polls, while the GOP is down in the 30s.
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