The rough economy is hard on everyone — on workers who want to hold onto their jobs, on homeowners who may be overextended on mortgage payments, and on banks who count on people paying their bills in order to stay solvent. And while the Obama administration is stealthily preparing another TARP bill to help the banks, Democrat elected officials are making it harder for banks | Read More »
I wrote yesterday about Scott Murphy — the Democrat candidate for Kirsten Gillibrand’s old House seat. I pointed out that he was trying to send part of his resume down the memory hole — suddenly erasing from his biography his role in starting an Indian rival to Ebay. I pointed out that he’d also had problems paying his taxes in the past. But now I | Read More »
Just a few weeks ago, current White House press secretary Robert Gibbs promised ‘a one word answer’ when it came to repealing the ban on gays openly serving in the military. Apparently the one word is ‘overpromising’ — which seems to be fast becoming the watchword of the new administration: The Obama administration is telling the Pentagon and gay-rights advocates that it will have to | Read More »
According to several news outlets, Democrats in New York’s 20th Congressional District may today choose their nominee for the upcoming Congressional race to fill the seat of Kirsten Gillibrand. And it looks like they may come up with a well-heeled candidate who can fund his own race. Scott Murphy is a managing director of Advantage Capital Partners, a venture capital firm that has more than | Read More »
The Associated Press’s Beth Fouhy reports that there’s enthusiasm among GOP Governors for the spending plan being debated in Congress: Most Republican governors have broken with their GOP colleagues in Congress and are pushing for passage of President Barack Obama’s economic aid plan that would send billions to states for education, public works and health care. Their state treasuries drained by the financial crisis, governors | Read More »
Senate Democrats lined up a show panel to testify on the need for a new TARP. The consensus seems to be that Congress will need to come up with at least $600 billion more, with another $600 billion to be printed up by the Federal Reserve: Noting the $350 billion spent by the government to shore up faltering banks and another $350 billion waiting to | Read More »
Both the House and Senate stimulus bills contain some pleasant-sounding ‘Buy America’ provisions, which require that all the steel used for construction funded in the bill be American-made. Rules like ‘Buy American’ may sound nice, but they are inherently unhelpful. In a global economy, what does ‘American-made’ mean? And how much of a premium should taxpayers cover to purchase ‘American-made’ products instead of others? Why | Read More »
How much do Democrats need to spend to ‘fix’ the economy? Apparently more than FDR did during the New Deal: Take a look at that, and remember that ‘progressives’ have hit upon one consistent talking point: if Republicans aren’t going to vote for the debt package, Congress should go ahead and make it much bigger. Yes, it’s possible. Call your Senators today, and tell them | Read More »
You’ve heard the horror stories about the wasteful projects in the House version of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi debt bill. You heard about reseeding the mall, and funding ‘stimulative’ contraception. But did you know that the Senate has a whole raft of new items in their version of the bill? Here’s a taste: • $20 million “for the removal of small- to medium-sized fish passage barriers.” (Pg. 45 | Read More »
Oh yeah. This will work out well: In the last few weeks, we’ve seen: – Senate Democrats publicly press Obama to make the economic recovery package far more robust. – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi publicly challenge Obama to be bolder on taxes. – Congressional progressives challenge the Obama administration – against its wishes – to include bankruptcy reforms in the economic stimulus package.
I suppose if you’ve built your empire on the shoulders of hard-core Democrats and MoveOn.org (but I repeat myself), then eventually you have to enlist the support of people who can get things done: Obama Rallies Business Allies Taking a page directly out of the playbook of his immediate predecessor, President Barack Obama on Wednesday convened a meeting of business leaders and then trotted them | Read More »
Glenn Reynolds asks a good question: WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR LAST BIG “INFRASTRUCTURE” BILL? Everyone seems to have forgotten that just three years ago, in August 2005, Congress enacted the biggest federal public works program in American history, spending a massive $286.4 billion on the 2005 highway bill. At that time, President Bush and congressional leaders from both parties told us that the new highway | Read More »
Barack Obama seems to have ended his bipartisan outreach effort on the most important legislation of his presidency. To me at least, it seems to have gone something like this: Barack Obama: Because no party has a monopoly on good ideas, I want to hear all suggestions. If someone has a better proposal, I’ll take it. My first goal is to get the economy moving | Read More »
It looks like not all Congressional Democrats are prepared to march in lockstep with Barack Obama into a brighter future: Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.), who chairs the Financial Services subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises, said on C-SPAN that Democrats have “lost our way” and “shouldn’t be pressed by silly deadlines” of getting the bill into law by the Presidents Day recess.
The Obama-Reid-Pelosi debt bill has a lot of interesting spending items in it, and more are being discovered by the day. Take page 153 for example. That’s where you’ll find this gem. Out of $3 billion allocated for ‘prevention and wellness programs’ there’s an earmark specifically for combating STDs: $335,000,000 shall be used as an additional amount to carry out domestic HIV/ AIDS, viral hepatitis, | Read More »
Today Barack Obama is having lunch with Congressional Republicans in a meeting that Congressional Quarterly says may be historic. He is trying to drum up support for his economic stimulus package — which today sits at $825 billion or so, and growing. If he is politically shrewd — and experience suggest that he is — he’ll try to erase memories of his “I won” moment | Read More »
Say goodbye to the new Vice President. Given his multiple gaffes on the campaign trail, during the transition, and since the inauguration, the only surprise is that it’s taken Obama this long to dispatch him to Dick Cheney’s undisclosed location. But before he fades from view, he wants you to know it’s because he’s become even more influential than before: In his first interview as | Read More »
Obama’s “I Won” seems likely to be a defining moment — at least in the early part of his presidency. Elected as a bipartisan — or post-partisan, or whatever — he and his supporters seem to think Republicans should be happy that they even pretended to care what we think. Now that they made a show of listening to us, we should dutifully back their | Read More »
Rasmussen reports that Americans are evenly split on whether Tim Geithner should be confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury. Forty-one percent (41%) of U.S. voters say Geithner’s failure to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes in 2001, 2002 and 2003 should prevent him from being Treasury secretary, while the identical number (41%) disagree. Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure in a new Rasmussen Reports national | Read More »
I just had participated in a conference call with several House Republican Representatives, regarding the House Republican Economic Recovery Plan that the was debuted today. Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), Congressman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) and Congressman Peter Roskam (R-IL) discussed the meeting this morning with President Obama, and their request that he encourage Congressional leaders to make good on his commitment to give Republican proposals | Read More »
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