You’ve heard all the excoriations on the tax cut compromise, here are the facts

• Working families will not lose their tax cut. A typical working family faced a tax increase of over $3,000 on January 1st. The framework agreement includes a mutually agreed upon solution to the impasse over taxes by extending the 2001/2003 income tax rates for two years and reforming the AMT to ensure that an additional 21 million households will not be hit with a tax increase.
• $56 billion for unemployment insurance extension. According to the Council of Economic Advisers, passing this provision will create 600,000 jobs in 2011 alone.
• $120 billion payroll tax cut for working families
• $40 billion in tax cuts for our hardest hit families and students
• 100% expensing for businesses next year
• Child Tax Credit: The $1,000 child tax credit will be extended for two years with the $3,000 refundability threshold established in the Recovery Act. This extension will ensure an ongoing tax cut to 10.5 million lower income families with 18 million children.
• Earned Income Tax Credit: The Recovery Act included an expansion of the EITC worth, on average, $600 in additional assistance to families with 3 or more children. It also helped working married families by reducing the marriage penalty in the EITC. Continuing this tax cut  for two years will benefit 6.5 million working parents with 15 million children.
• American Opportunity Tax Credit: The Recovery Act included a new, partially refundable tax credit of up to $2,500 to help students and their families cover the cost of college tuition. This deal fully extends AOTC for two years, ensuring that more than 8 million students will continue to receive this tax benefit to help them afford college.
• A 2-year extension of the R&D tax credit and other tax incentives to support business expansion. 

You decide 

What worries us is that Karl Rove is endorsing this deal along with many others on the Republican side whilie Democrats are livid.  In a balanced negotiated deal both parties walk away a little unhappy.  However, when one party is swinging from the chandeliers and the other is about to jump off a cliff the deal is probably not balanced.  So prominent GOPers accepting this proposal from this White House after rejecting every single idea for the past two years is probably a signal that something is  afoot in Denmark.

It appears that that want-to-be leader of the House is talking out of the side of his neck, along with many other Republicans, when they say that the stimulus did not work. 

Mark Zandi, Moody’s chief economist and economist most quoted by Republicans to support their position on the economy, said Boehner was “just wrong” to call the $787 billion stimulus spending  “a failure.”

If there was no stimulus at all, Zandi said, unemployment would be at around 11.5% rather than 9.5%.

“I think if we had not had the stimulus, estimates put forward by the Congressional Budget Office are absolutely right: we’d have 2.5-3 million fewer jobs than we’d have today,” he said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast briefing this morning.

What needs to change are people’s expectations, he said. “The stimulus did exactly what it was intended to do. It was intended to end the recession, jump-start the economy, and it did that,” said Zandi, who has advised both Obama and John McCain in the past.

NOTE:Attorney barred in the District of Columbia and California currently looking for opportunities in the private and government sectors.  Specializes in ediscovery/litigation efficiency project management but can do straight litigation or litigation management.  Feel free to contact me with opportunities at progress@progresspolitics.com

The GOP continues to claim that everything MUST be paid for EXCEPT the extension of Bush tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest Americans.  Yes, according to high ranking GOP members in Congress, the $55 billion dollar price tag that it would cost for one year of extending the Bush tax cuts to Americans making over $250,000 annually should be written off as necessary.  So the GOP believe that it is more important for rich people to live better than it is for poor and unemployed individuals to live at all.  Who represents your interest and values in Washington, DC?

The second highest ranking Republican in the Senate doubled down on a controversial statement he made this weekend, arguing in greater detail that tax cuts for wealthy people should never be offset by tax increases in other areas — but that unemployment benefits need to be fully paid for by either spending cuts or tax increases. In so doing, he claimed candidly that the very existence of unemployment insurance is a “necessary evil,” while tax cuts ought not be paid for by increases in order to make it easier to shrink the size of government.

“My view, and I think most of the people in my party don’t believe that you should ever have to offset a tax cut,” Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl told a handful of reporters outside the Senate chamber this afternoon. “That clearly reduced savings is a better way to offset increased spending than a tax increase is.”

Attorney barred in the District of Columbia and California currently looking for opportunities in the private and government sectors.  Specializes in ediscovery/litigation efficiency project management but can do straight litigation or litigation management.  Feel free to contact me with opportunities at progress@progresspolitics.com

The GOP has been on parade in its opposition to the stimulus package passed a year ago but that didn’t stop Republicans from being first in line with their hand out.  Republican Senators and House members alike has their hands out while at the same time yelling to anyone who would listen how the stimulus did not create any jobs.  They did so while using such stimulus money to do what….create jobs in their districts and states.  One of its own called out the Republicans on its blatant hypocrisy yesterday.  Yes, the Rupert Murdoch owned conservative with a capital C Wall Street Journal listed some of the most egregious Republican offenders who have been begging for stimulus money while bashing it all over the airwaves.

More than a dozen Republican lawmakers supported stimulus-funding requests submitted to the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Forest Service, in letters obtained by The Wall Street Journal through the Freedom of Information Act.

First up, Congressman Paul “wasteful spending spree” Ryan of Illinois:

Rep. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who called the stimulus a “wasteful spending spree” that “misses the mark on all counts,” wrote to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis in October in support of a grant application from a group in his district which, he said, “intends to place 1,000 workers in green jobs.” A spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan said the congressman felt it was his job to provide “the basic constituent service of lending his assistance for federal grant requests.”

Second, Representatives Sue Myrick (NC) and Jean Schmidt (OH):

Republican Reps. Sue Myrick of North Carolina and Jean Schmidt of Ohio sent letters in October asking for consideration of funding requests from local organizations training workers for energy-efficiency projects.

In November, Ms. Schmidt said in a statement, “It is time to recall the stimulus funds that have not been spent before the Chinese start charging us interest.”

Aaahh Sen. Cornyn of Texas:

The Environmental Protection Agency received two letters from Sen. John Cornyn of Texas asking for consideration of grants for clean diesel projects in San Antonio and Houston. Mr. Cornyn is the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

One of the letters was signed jointly with Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, also of Texas. The letter said that the Port of Houston Authority “has informed me of the positive impact this grant will have in the region by serving as a foundation for PHA’s Clean Air Strategy Plan, creating jobs, and significantly reducing diesel emissions.” Houston received millions of dollars in diesel funding.

The agency also appeared to have received eight identical letters from Republican Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah recommending infrastructure projects in his state, seven of which were sent before stimulus legislation was passed by Congress.

You can read the full list of GOP hypocrites here.  ThinkProgress has a much longer list here.  Where’s the tea party at?

DEMOCRATS! REPUBLICANS ARE NOT GOING TO WORK WITH YOU! Why should they work with DEmocrats when they can oppose every single beneficial bill then blatantly and hypocritically take credit for such bills at the same time. Not to mention admit in private that such bills are good policy. Republicans will not vote for any legislation proposed by the Democrats or this President because opposing both is good politics for their party regardless of the help such legislation would provide to the American people. So Move it along Democrats and pass the much needed jobs bill, health care reform, and financial regulatory reform and stop pursuing the myth of bipartisanship!

So whenever you hear a Republican politician or tea partier say that the stimulus failed point them to this article where conservative think tank AEI admitted that the stimulus boosted the economy by 4%.

The real economy also responded to the massive stimulus but remained heavily dependent on it. In the United States, growth during the second half of 2009 probably averaged about 3 percent. Absent temporary fiscal stimulus and inventory rebuilding, which taken together added about 4 percentage points to U.S. growth, the economy would have contracted at about a 1 percent annual rate during the second half of 2009.

Some may have missed the good news that came out regarding the good the the Obama administration has accomplished during its seven months in office.  Remember when the economy was on the brink of desaster in January?  Well we are seeing a few changes as a result of policies implemented by this administration.

• There has been a significant jump in home sales by 7.2 percent.  This is the largest monthly increase in ten years.  Analysts opine that the President’s tax breaks for first time home buyers contributed significantly.
• A slowing of job loss as indicated this month from 9.5 percent to 9.4 percent
• Federal Chairman Ben Bernanke’s forcast that the economy is on the verge of recovery
• The rise in the stock market by 150 points at close of business last Friday
• The success of the cash-for-clunkers program resulting in the sale of more cars during the short period that the program was in place than some dealers have seen in the last ten years of being in business.  More than 450,000 energy efficient cars were sold in the past few weeks.

President Obama will announce today that he will reappoint Federal Chairman Ben Bernanke to the Federal Reserve.

New York’s Senator Chuck Schumer has a message for GOP governors humming and hawing over whether that want to accept the funds from the Reinvestment and Recovery Act (stimulus).  Schumer, in a letter to Peter Orzag of the Office of Management and Budget, requests that that the governors of the states not be given the option to splice and dice the package because it would then diminish the stimulative effect of the package and its implementation.  Lousiana’s governor Jindal has indicated that he will accept some of the funds but will reject monies allocated for the unemployment trust fund (UTF).  Interesting position by Jindal considering that he accepted and advocated for the same federal funds allocated to the UTF for Katrina relief.  Not to mention that Lousiana has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the country.  See Schumer’s letter to the Office of Management and Budget below.

Dear Director Orszag:

In recent days, a small minority of governors, mostly Republicans, have publicly weighed the possibility of foregoing certain emergency provisions provided under the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed last week by President Obama. I believe this prospect not only would undercut the stimulative effect of the recovery package, but also is inconsistent with a key provision included in the law passed by Congress. To protect the integrity of the recovery program, I urge the administration to issue implementation guidance clarifying that while any Governor may exercise his or her discretion to accept or reject the federal funds provided in the stimulus, no Governor should have the authority to arbitrarily adopt a select subset of the overall package.

As you know, Section 1607(a) of the economic recovery legislation provides that the Governor of each state must certify a request for stimulus funds before any money can flow. No language in this provision, however, permits the governor to selectively adopt some components of the bill while rejecting others. To allow such picking and choosing would, in effect, empower the governors with a line-item veto authority that President Obama himself did not possess at the time he signed the legislation. It would also undermine the overall success of the bill, as the components most singled out for criticism by these governors are among the most productive measures in terms of stimulating the economy.

For instance, at least two governors have proposed rejecting a program to expand unemployment insurance for laid-off workers. Economists consistently rank unemployment insurance among the most efficient and cost-effective fiscal stimulus measures; by one frequently cited estimate, it provides an economic return of as high as $1.73 for every dollar invested. Thus, by denying this provision for their residents, these governors are not just depriving some of the neediest Americans of relief in a dire economy; they are undermining the overall stimulative impact of the package.

No one would dispute that these governors should be given the choice as to whether to accept the funds or not. But it should not be multiple choice. The composition of the package was rightly dictated by economic considerations; we should not let the implementation of the package be dictated by political considerations.

Sincerely,

Charles E. Schumer

United States Senator

SATURDAY, February 21, 2009
WEEKLY ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT
TO THE NATION 

     THE PRESIDENT:  Earlier this week, I signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — the most sweeping economic recovery plan in history.  Because of this plan, 3.5 million Americans will now go to work doing the work that America needs done.

     I’m grateful to Congress, governors and mayors across the country, and to all of you whose support made this critical step possible.

     Because of what we did together, there will now be shovels in the ground, cranes in the air, and workers rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, and repairing our faulty levees and dams.

     Because of what we did, companies — large and small — that produce renewable energy can now apply for loan guarantees and tax credits and find ways to grow, instead of laying people off; and families can lower their energy bills by weatherizing their homes.

     Because of what we did, our children can now graduate from 21st century schools and millions more can do what was unaffordable just last week — and get their college degree.

     Because of what we did, lives will be saved and health care costs will be cut with new computerized medical records. 

     Because of what we did, there will now be police on the beat, firefighters on the job, and teachers preparing lesson plans who thought they would not be able to continue pursuing their critical missions.  And ensure that all of this is done with an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability, I have assigned a team of managers to make sure that precious tax dollars are invested wisely and well.

     Because of what we did, 95 percent of all working families will get a tax cut — in keeping with a promise I made on the campaign.  And I’m pleased to announce that this morning, the Treasury Department began directing employers to reduce the amount of taxes withheld from paychecks — meaning that by April 1st, a typical family will begin taking home at least $65 more every month.  Never before in our history has a tax cut taken effect faster or gone to so many hardworking Americans.

     But as important as it was that I was able to sign this plan into law, it is only a first step on the road to economic recovery.  And we can’t fail to complete the journey.  That will require stemming the spread of foreclosures and falling home values, and doing all we can to help responsible homeowners stay in their homes, which is exactly what the housing plan I announced last week will help us do.

     It will require stabilizing and repairing our banking system, and getting credit flowing again to families and businesses.  It will require reforming the broken regulatory system that made this crisis possible, and recognizing that it’s only by setting and enforcing 21st century rules of the road that we can build a thriving economy.

     And it will require doing all we can to get exploding deficits under control as our economy begins to recover.  That work begins on Monday, when I will convene a fiscal summit of independent experts and unions, advocacy groups and members of Congress, to discuss how we can cut the trillion-dollar deficit that we’ve inherited.  On Tuesday, I will speak to the nation about our urgent national priorities.  And on Thursday, I’ll release a budget that’s sober in its assessments, honest in its accounting, and lays out in detail my strategy for investing in what we need, cutting what we don’t, and restoring fiscal discipline.

     No single piece of this broad economic recovery can, by itself, meet the demands that have been placed on us.  We can’t help people find work or pay their bills unless we unlock credit for families and businesses.  We can’t solve our housing crisis unless we help people find work so that they can make payments on their homes.  We can’t produce shared prosperity without firm rules of the road, and we can’t generate sustained growth without getting our deficits under control.  In short, we cannot successfully address any of our problems without addressing them all.  And that is exactly what the strategy we are pursuing is designed to do.

     None of this will be easy.  The road ahead will be long and full of hazards.  But I am confident that we, as a people, have the strength and wisdom to carry out this strategy and overcome this crisis.  And if we do, our economy — and our country — will be better and stronger for it.

     Thank you. 

President Obama signed the stimulus bill yesterday as well as gave a breakdown of how the money will be spent. 

• $288 billion in tax relief
• $144 billion in state and local fiscal relief
• $111 billion in infrastructure and science
• $81 billion goe to protecting the vulnerable
• $59 billion healthcare
• $53 billion education and training
• $43 billion energy
• $8 billion listed as other

The President said that 3.5 million jobs will be created or saved by the package.  For more specific information about the bill and track how it is being spent go to www.recovery.gov

Today the President will unveil his plan to stabilize the housing market in Phoenix, Arizona, one of the hardest hit areas in the nation for foreclosures.

The second stimulus package has been approved by the House and the Senate and both bodies will be voting on it in the next few days hoping for the President to sign it by Monday.  The package consists of $507 billion in spending programs and $282 billion in tax relief and is designed to save or creat 3.5 million jobs.  Much of the education funding was put back into the package.  Stimulus checks to individuals were cut back from $500 per individual, $1000 per family to $400 per individual and $800 per family.  The package will also include a one time payment of $250 to social security and disability recipients.  The bill will extend unemployment benefits by 20 weeks and boost such benefits by $25. Further, the bill expands the subsidy that helps the unemployed continue to buy health insurance from their employer. A one time tax credit for  buyers purchasing a home in 2009 was included but was reduced to $8000 tax credit for first-time buyers only instead of the initial $15,000 for all home buyers.  In addition, tax breaks for new car buyers to write off interest for their loans. Not sure if that tax credit will be retroactive to include January and and the first part of February of 2009. There are significant amounts for infrastructure, healthcare, education, and energy. The total amount of the package is $789 billion.  Hopefully the full details of the new package will be released in the coming days.  Read the full text of the FINAL bill here .

February 10, 2009   8pm EST

President Barack Obama 

Good evening. Before I take your questions tonight, I’d like to speak briefly about the state of our economy and why I believe we need to put this recovery plan in motion as soon as possible.

I took a trip to Elkhart, Indiana today. Elkhart is a place that has lost jobs faster than anywhere else in America. In one year, the unemployment rate went from 4.7% to 15.3%. Companies that have sustained this community for years are shedding jobs at an alarming speed, and the people who’ve lost them have no idea what to do or who to turn to. They can’t pay their bills and they’ve stopped spending money. And because they’ve stopped spending money, more businesses have been forced to lay off more workers. Local TV stations have started running public service announcements that tell people where to find food banks, even as the food banks don’t have enough to meet the demand.

As we speak, similar scenes are playing out in cities and towns across the country. Last Monday, more than 1,000 men and women stood in line for 35 firefighter jobs in Miami. Last month, our economy lost 598,000 jobs, which is nearly the equivalent of losing every single job in the state of Maine. And if there’s anyone out there who still doesn’t believe this constitutes a full-blown crisis, I suggest speaking to one of the millions of Americans whose lives have been turned upside down because they don’t know where their next paycheck is coming from.

That is why the single most important part of this Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Plan is the fact that it will save or create up to 4 million jobs. Because that is what America needs most right now.

It is absolutely true that we cannot depend on government alone to create jobs or economic growth. That is and must be the role of the private sector. But at this particular moment, with the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back to life. It is only government that can break the vicious cycle where lost jobs lead to people spending less money which leads to even more layoffs. And breaking that cycle is exactly what the plan that’s moving through Congress is designed to do.

When passed, this plan will ensure that Americans who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own can receive greater unemployment benefits and continue their health care coverage. We will also provide a $2,500 tax credit to folks who are struggling to pay the cost of their college tuition, and $1000 worth of badly-needed tax relief to working and middle-class families. These steps will put more money in the pockets of those Americans who are most likely to spend it, and that will help break the cycle and get our economy moving.

But as we learned very clearly and conclusively over the last eight years, tax cuts alone cannot solve all our economic problems – especially tax cuts that are targeted to the wealthiest few Americans. We have tried that strategy time and time again, and it has only helped lead us to the crisis we face right now.

That is why we have come together around a plan that combines hundreds of billions in tax cuts for the middle-class with direct investments in areas like health care, energy, education, and infrastructure – investments that will save jobs, create new jobs and new businesses, and help our economy grow again – now and in the future.

More than 90% of the jobs created by this plan will be in the private sector. These will not be make-work jobs, but jobs doing the work that America desperately needs done. Jobs rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, and repairing our dangerously deficient dams and levees so that we don’t face another Katrina. They will be jobs building the wind turbines and solar panels and fuel-efficient cars that will lower our dependence on foreign oil, and modernizing a costly health care system that will save us billions of dollars and countless lives. They’ll be jobs creating 21st century classrooms, libraries, and labs for millions of children across America. And they’ll be the jobs of firefighters, teachers, and police officers that would otherwise be eliminated if we do not provide states with some relief.

After many weeks of debate and discussion, the plan that ultimately emerges from Congress must be big enough and bold enough to meet the size of the economic challenge we face right now. It is a plan that is already supported by businesses representing almost every industry in America; by both the Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO. It contains input, ideas, and compromises from both Democrats and Republicans. It also contains an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability, so that every American will be able to go online and see where and how we’re spending every dime. What it does not contain, however, is a single pet project, and it has been stripped of the projects members of both parties found most objectionable.

Despite all of this, the plan is not perfect. No plan is. I can’t tell you for sure that everything in this plan will work exactly as we hope, but I can tell you with complete confidence that a failure to act will only deepen this crisis as well as the pain felt by millions of Americans. My administration inherited a deficit of over $1 trillion, but because we also inherited the most profound economic emergency since the Great Depression, doing too little or nothing at all will result in an even greater deficit of jobs, incomes; and confidence. That is a deficit that could turn a crisis into a catastrophe. And I refuse to let that happen. As long as I hold this office, I will do whatever it takes to put this country back to work.

I want to thank the members of Congress who’ve worked so hard to move this plan forward, but I also want to urge all members of Congress to act without delay in the coming week to resolve their differences and pass this plan.

We find ourselves in a rare moment where the citizens of our country and all countries are watching and waiting for us to lead. It is a responsibility that this generation did not ask for, but one that we must accept for the sake of our future and our children’s. The strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose. That is the test facing the United States of America in this winter of our hardship, and it is our duty as leaders and citizens to stay true to that purpose in the weeks and months ahead. After a day of speaking with and listening to the fundamentally decent men and women who call this nation home, I have full faith and confidence that we can. And with that, I’ll take your questions.

And let me go to Jennifer Loven at [The Associated Press]. There you go.

Question: Thank you, Mr. President. Earlier today in Indiana, you said something striking. You said that this nation could end up in a crisis without action that we would be unable to reverse.

Can you talk about what you know or what you’re hearing that would lead you to say that our recession might be permanent when others in our history have not? And do you think that you risk losing some credibility or even talking down the economy by using dire language like that?

Obama: No, no, no, no. I think that what I’ve said is what other economists have said across the political spectrum, which is that, if you delay acting on an economy of this severity, then you potentially create a negative spiral that becomes much more difficult for us to get out of.

We saw this happen in Japan in the 1990s, where they did not act boldly and swiftly enough and, as a consequence, they suffered what was called the lost decade, where essentially, for the entire ’90s, they did not see any significant economic growth.

So what I’m trying to underscore is what the people in Elkhart already understand, that this is not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill recession. We are going through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

We’ve lost now 3.6 million jobs, but what’s perhaps even more disturbing is that almost half of that job loss has taken place over the last three months, which means that the problems are accelerating instead of getting better.

Now, what I said in Elkhart today is what I repeat this evening, which is, I’m absolutely confident that we can solve this problem, but it’s going to require us to take some significant, important steps.

Step number one: We have to pass an economic recovery and reinvestment plan. And we’ve made progress. There was a vote this evening that moved the process forward in the Senate. We already have a House bill that’s passed. I’m hoping, over the next several days, that the House and the Senate can reconcile their differences and get that bill on my desk.

There have been criticisms from a bunch of different directions about this bill, so let me just address a few of them.

Some of the criticisms really are with the basic idea that government should intervene at all in this moment of crisis. Now, you have some people, very sincere, who philosophically just think the government has no business interfering in the marketplace. And, in fact, there are several who’ve suggested that FDR was wrong to interfere back in the New Deal. They’re fighting battles that I thought were resolved a pretty long time ago.

Most economists almost unanimously recognize that, even if philosophically you’re — you’re wary of government intervening in the economy, when you have the kind of problem we have right now — what started on Wall Street, goes to Main Street, suddenly businesses can’t get credit, they start paring back their investment, they start laying off workers, workers start pulling back in terms of spending — that, when you have that situation, that government is an important element of introducing some additional demand into the economy.

We stand to lose about $1 trillion worth of demand this year and another trillion next year. And what that means is you’ve got this gaping hole in the economy.

That’s why the figure that we initially came up with of approximately $800 billion was put forward. That wasn’t just some random number that I plucked out of — out of a hat. That was Republican and Democratic, conservative and liberal economists that I spoke to who indicated that, given the magnitude of the crisis and the fact that it’s happening worldwide, it’s important for us to have a bill of sufficient size and scope that we can save or create 4 million jobs.

That still means that you’re going to have some net job loss, but at least we can start slowing the trend and moving it in the right direction.

Now, the recovery and reinvestment package is not the only thing we have to do. It’s one leg of the stool. We are still going to have to make sure that we are attracting private capital, get the credit markets flowing again, because that’s the lifeblood of the economy.

And so tomorrow my treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, will be announcing some very clear and specific plans for how we are going to start loosening up credit once again.

And that means having some transparency and oversight in the system. It means that we correct some of the mistakes with TARP that were made earlier, the lack of consistency, the lack of clarity, in terms of how the program was going to move forward.

It means that we condition taxpayer dollars that are being provided to banks on them showing some restraint when it comes to executive compensation, not using the money to charter corporate jets when they’re not necessary.

It means that we focus on housing and how are we going to help homeowners that are suffering foreclosure or homeowners who are still making their mortgage payments, but are seeing their property values decline.

So there are going to be a whole range of approaches that we have to take for dealing with the economy. My bottom line is to make sure that we are saving or creating 4 million jobs, we are making sure that the financial system is working again, that homeowners are getting some relief.

And I’m happy to get good ideas from across the political spectrum, from Democrats and Republicans. What I won’t do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place, because those theories have been tested, and they have failed. And that’s what part of the election in November was all about.

OK. Karen Boeing (ph) of Reuters? Read the rest of this entry »

All the economist say that we need to do something and do something FAST lest our situation begin to spiral out of control.  Currently 11.6 million people are out of work.  A total of 11.6 million people are out of work service and manufacturing.  We understand that the GOP stands for low taxes for the rich and low spending but  in this situation that approach will not work.  The GOP knows that so now they say okay you can do spending but you must spend it the way we want you to spend it or we will not come along. Well that will not work for the democrats because they voted for change last November.  There are several GOP Senators and governors who said this weekend that they will not support the new bill….they have not seen the entire bill yet.  Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina pretty much said to his constituents let them eat cake.  When told that if this stimulus package doesn’t happen companies in his states will go belly up which means thousands of more jobs lost in South Carolina.  Sanford responded, it’s a tough but neccessary lesson.  Easy for him to say, he has a government job.  The Republican party has been masterful in their ability to get people to vote against their own interest by focusing on minor fringe issues that don’t necessarily effect their life.  One wonders if in this more informed, more engaged electorate it will be as successful this time.  If you beleive in his judgment, call/write your Senator and tell him you support this stimulus package.  Contact info for all Senators here.

President Barack Obama has been in office for exactly two weeks and two days and as much as the Republican party would like to blame our current president for the economic situation, he did not create it.  He inherited it.  Proof of that fact was undeniably demonstrated on November 4, 2008.  At which time, the American people concluded that it was the GOP and its leader of the past eight years that created this mess and voted it and its ideologies out of office.  So why is the GOP pushing the same old policies that got them kicked out of the majority and the presidency?  Denial and no new or better ideas.  Sen. John McCain, in an impassioned speech on the Senate floor yesterday, introduced a GOP crafted alternative stimulus bill.  I could give you a full account of the bill but basically it was tax cuts, tax cuts, corporate tax cuts, no spending.  Guess what GOP, the whole point of the stimulus package is to for the government to spend to stimulate the economy or create demand because why…..the citizens are not spending.  It’s called Keynesian economics and if done right could pull us out of this economic downturn.  In addition, President Obama has a team of top notch economic advisors advising him on his economic policy and stimulus proposal…..who advised the GOP on theirs?   The Republican party hastily put together an alternative without bothering to do their homework.  And by doing their homework I mean reading the actual stimulus proposal that is currently being debated in the Senate.  How can you provide informed oppostion about improving the economy if you haven’t bothered to hire an economist?   Who exactly advised the GOP as to the next steps the nation should take?  My guess is that they are making it up as they go along.  This whole drama is playing politics pure and simple.  

The GOP cites as its main reasons for rejecting the bill is that some of the items in the bill have nothing to do with stimulus, too much spending and not enough tax cuts.  One item listed frequently by GOP pundits is a smoking cessation program.   Guess what…it’s gone, no longer in the bill.  Read the bill.  Also, Sen.  McCain erroneously claimed, when presenting his GOP alternative bill,  that there are no funds allocated to defense.  Guess what….4.5 billion is being allocated to defense, a half billion more than what was proposed in the McCain bill.  Further, the GOP opposes money allocated for “sprucing up government buildings.”  Well, “sprucing up government buildings” is actually insulating federal buildings to make them more energy efficient.  So according to the GOP when I put insulation in my house I’m “sprucing” it up?  Or, am I trying to insulate the heat so that my gas/electric bill will be lower? The Grand Old Party further complained about new state vehicles being a part of the stimulus.  Okay, can you say manufacturing, Detroit, auto bailout?  Guess what….such a line item would save and create auto manufacturing jobs.  Finally, the GOP wants tax cuts….36% of the stimulus package is tax cuts.  Such tax cuts are not for the wealthy or corporate america that the GOP is advocating.  Instead the tax cuts will go to the middle class and the working poor.  Again, Democrats are in the majority and they will be doing things differently than Republicans may prefer but that’s what happen when the winning party is different than the losing party.  Remember, the people voted for CHANGE last November 4th.

Further, Bush tried tax cuts as a stimulus last year, it didn’t work.  The former president spent $150 billion in tax cuts last year and received a mere 15% return.  That’s right, consumers ended up spending only 15% of that $150 billion.  In otherwards it didn’t work.  As for fiscal responsibility of the GOP, when Bush took office and the Republicans controlled Congress for six of the last eight years, the national debt doubled from $5 trillion to $10 trillion.  Guess how long it took us to accumulate the $5 trillion national debt that we owed prior to the Bush presidency?  A whopping 231 years! So Bush and the GOP managed to do in eight years what 42 prior presidents could not do in 231 years -as a group.  And yet the GOP is still singing the same old song.  With a record like that it takes real audacity to claim that you know best when it comes to fiscal responsibility.  The new majority party should be encouraged to do things differently because what the government has been doing under GOP leadership has not worked.  Given our nation’s current economic state now is not the time to attempt to sabotage the President in an effort to gain partisan advantage.  The stakes are too high.

One last thing, remember TARP?  Well the remnants of how badly the Bush administration’s Hank Paulson botched it are still lingering.  It turns out that Paulson paid the bargain price of $254 billion of TARP funds for assets worth a mere $176 billion.  Nice job Paulie.  The GOP continue to use the failures of THEIR party (failure to properly manage the TARP funds) as an excuse for not “rushing” through the stimulus package.  TARP was approved by the Senate within two weeks of being proposed.  The Senate has had double that time to debate the stimulus bill.  The stimulus bill in its current state has one hundred percent more oversight and accountability.  One other thing….we have a new Administration doing things.  Why the GOP thinks that because they rushed through the TARP bill and the Bush administration mishandled the funds that if they “rush” through the stimulus funds the Obama administration will do the same defies logic.  President Obama is not by any stretch of the imagination President Bush.  Didn’t the American voters decide that he has MUCH better judgment.  So to use such obstructionist tactics to try and make a comeback at a time when our country is in such great peril is a very risky and dangerous move.  Of course the opposing parties will disagree about some of the line items in the bill, they are the opposing parties.  But the American people overwhelmingly voted a DIFFERENT ideology into office and the Majority of the House and the Senate therefore that party or ideology makes the final decision. Now is the time to trust the President to do what we the people elected him to do.

Let your views be known by calling your Senator and letting him/her know that this is not a joke or abstract academic debating exercise we need action.  The GOP senators claim that they are hearing from constituents opposed to the stimulus, if you favor the stimulus you need to let your senator know.  If you voted for Obama for his JUDGMENT then allow him to use it by calling your Senator and letting him/her know that you support this bill.  The telephone and email addresses of all 100 senators.  Call or Email today because they may be voting as soon as today or tomorrow.

In spite of President Obama’s very public overtures towards bipartisanship the GOP is still towing the party hard line.  Not one single Republican in the House voted for President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  Below is a list of all the Republican House members and a few democrats who did not vote for the plan.  If you believe that your Congressman should vote for this Act call him up and make your wishes know.  The only way to change Washington and get rid of the party bickering is to call or write to the people in Congress and tell them what you want them to do.  We as the constituents have a lot of power lets use it.  Remember it is up to us to make the change by forcing our leaders to listen and represent our interest in Washington.  Call your Congress member.  The Republican member names are all italicized.  The area code for all the numbers is #202