House Conservatives Support Barack Obama’s Latest Stimulus

By: Erick Erickson (Diary) | February 9th, 2012 at 04:46 AM |

RESIZE: AAA

Since February of 2009 when President Barack Obama began his aggressive push for stimulus into the American economy, he focused on one core area — infrastructure.

In fact, in his stimulus speech before Congress in 2009, his States of the Union in 2010, 2011, and 2012, and his Jobs Act speech of late 2011, the President repeated referred to spending government money to create jobs to fix America’s infrastructure.

Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH), leader of the Republican Study Committee, is confirmed to be leaning toward supporting the plan. His public pronouncements that he is leaning toward supporting the plan is leading House conservatives as a whole to support this new stimulus plan — a stimulus plan to create jobs fixing and expanding America’s infrastructure.

The plan will most likely necessitate a federal bailout of the Highway Trust Fund, which is typically funded through the gas tax and is used to pay for highway projects. But Obama’s new stimulus busts the cap on the trust fund and, like social security, gets into general fund money to pay for the spending binge.

With the House bill, as is typical of Barack Obama’s legislation, spending will outpace income over the next five years by $69.6 billion. Moreso, as is also typical of President Obama’s stimulus schemes, Washington would retain the bulk of control, even though the money would be going to state transportation projects. Federal strings and federal money will come with the legislation.

Oh, and if the House goes along with the Senate’s version of this stimulus plan, Americans could see new taxes on their IRA’s.

So why is Congressman Jim Jordan leading conservatives to support Barack Obama’s latest job creation scheme with federal tax dollars to fund a temporary infrastructure spending binge?

Part of the reason is because highway spending is kryptonite to conservatives. You want to undermine conservative principles, just throw a roads building scheme into legislation.

But the biggest reason conservatives in the House are lining up to bust the budget, bankrupt the Highway Trust Fund, and spend $69 billion more than will come in in revenue is because this is John Boehner’s stimulus scheme, not Barack Obama’s.

It busts the budget, just like Barack Obama.

It raids government trust funds for pet projects, just like Barack Obama would do.

Over five years, it adds to the federal debt, just like Barack Obama’s schemes.

But the letter next to the plan is an “R” and not a “D”, so conservatives will yet again sell out their principles because John Boehner and not Barack Obama asked them to bankrupt the country.

With leadership like this is it any wonder we’re at $16 trillion in debt?

Tags: Barack Obama, Conservatives, Jim Jordan, John Boehner

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mikelindell2

Who actually were conservatives when in Washington (Newt Gingrich). Most Republicans now are totally useless, incompetent, spineless, or liberal.
fpete13527

Progressive Mica from Florida, who is a pork-a-holic transportation earmark guy interested mostly in supporting Obama public service union handouts, has also been shilling for billions related to this.

After multiple non-stimuli for roads that have gone for nothing but public service union war chests, and Obama “Smart Growth” transportation non-projects, this is unfathomable.

This is nothing but bad. Anyone in the Republican legislature involved with supporting this (especially now) needs to be expurgated.

Boehner needs to be gone yesterday.
http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

Who will use part of that money to defeat them in elections.

The stupid party strikes again.
falconrap

for this yet? I didn’t see a specific bill named, and I want to make sure my congressman (Billirakis) goes against it, which he probably will.
qualityguy

I would really like an answer to this. The House leadership is “conservative” – by what stretch of who’s imagination can you make this statement? The only “conservatives” that were elected to the House in 2010 are all “junior” members. Boehner, Cantor and the rest of the “permanent” DC establishment are disgraces – call them that. They don’t even rate being called RINOs! Calling the House “conservative” is like calling BHO a leader – it’s a joke!
http://scipio62.livejournal.com/ scipio62

These Republicans haven’t learned anything from the beating they took in 2006.
rj145

These “Republibozos” don’t comprehend that they live in a glass house. What they do, and what they are, is plainly visible to all They promised change but deliver more of the same. They failed in 2006 and they are failing now. They believe that they have a chance to occupy the Senate, the House, and the White House in 2012. With their track record thus far, “Fat chance”!
atillathehun

When the goal is to destroy capitalism by overload where does the conservative go. Is the Republic over with the Marxist gloating in Congrss?
6t9boss

leave your principles at the door on the floor and support the DOWN TICKET so we can WIN ELECTIONS to do what? GetMore Democrate Taxing and Spending!……….. YES! Vote for the Letter “R”

The Letter ” R “…It’s not just for the GOP anymore…….Democrates like it too!
lquist1

I really want to think that I could get behind Santorum as Romney is a hopeless RINO retread loser who will energize the base like a dead battery and Newt seems to be looking more and more like damaged goods these days (hope I’m wrong on that too). But Rick has a history of voting for bills like these. I just wonder if he has a position on this latest fiasco, cause I’d really like to hear what it is.
countryroad2012

are the taxes they are proposing on the IRA’s?
guidvce

to me. Almost anything either party does in D.C. does not amaze me anymore. They both seem to be intent on bringing this country to its knees and turn it into a socialist state, at the least. Possibly a communist one.
The repubs seem to be intentionally heading to their own self-destruction. They must know that “We the People” do not see their support of this kind of crap as desirable.
What are they thinking, or not.
I’d be interested, as is “lquist1″, on where the current crop of candidate hopefuls stand on this bill. So far, I’m not convinced any of them have this country’s best interest in mind. Just more of the same.
Liberalism is mental disorder. Irregardless of party affiliation.
ag8tor

It’ is past time to clean house (and senate). This is exactly the reason I have changed my registration to Independent. I have never in my 60 years seen a more despicable, worthless, self-centered group in DC. I am referring to both sides! You expect the dems to be cluless since they don’t have the stones to push back against “Dear leader”. Now we have the new edition of the reps carrying water for his majesty as well. Boehner should take Bidens place as VP since he has done more for this so-called president than any of the dems. We as citizens wasted our time voting in 2010. What we thought was a referendum on liberal spending has turned out to be a joke. Please do NOT mention Reps and leadership in the same sentence again. The terms are diametrically opposed!
johnt

If it has failed why give it more money when the answer lies in management. If otherwise it is plain that we have the golden calf of ongoing corruption, that billions more will lead to billions more still. As it has consistently for years. Prepare yourselves for the tax increases & then more infrastructure spending.
Rudy

I will be voting for Newt.

All these “respectable no-personal-baggage’ people we keep electing aren’t getting us anywhere. I’ll vote for a crack addict prostitute right now if I know they would go up to Washington and actually stand for conservative values.

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Juggernaut

TP a few politicians have supported Romney for potus. The whole game is to run up the debt while dividing Americans while also pushing grass roots groups out of the picture till the next election. If we divide they win while they plot the next game to garner votes. All the more reason to ignore the establishments choice for potus.
repubnut

Folks, unless we get Newt into the White House ,we haven’t any chance of keeping America the way we once knew it !!! Why do you think the ESTABLESMENT IS AGAINST NEWT ????
mobeaux

ENOUGH: would you please look at the way your INDEPENDENTS have voted. I think you will find he also has voted with this regime, so who do we support now.
dave148

“Stimulus” certainly isn’t the job of the government,
and Post roads were established long ago. The concepts
in the Constitution are very simple. Once we see the
list of who is supporting this, we’ll have to send
them some elementary school level lessons on the Constitution.
tnguy

“But the letter next to the plan is an ?R? and not a ?D?, so conservatives will yet again sell out their principles because John Boehner and not Barack Obama asked them to bankrupt the country.

With leadership like this is it any wonder we?re at $16 trillion in debt?”

You’re essentially advocating the same thing when you insist we should hold our noses and vote for a non-conservative next November….

Your post demonstrates – in spades – how the real issue is much larger than the office of president. It should be shouted from the rooftops: beating Obama is utterly irrelevant if we’re unwilling to first address the rot in our own party.
http://www.theprecinctproject.wordpress.com ColdWarrior

CW
carolina

As I understand it, when the parent dies with remaining funds in an IRA, the beneficiary (ies) MUST take annual income (taxable) on a ‘stretched’ basis determined by their age (projected life). This new tax would be a surcharge on top of the normal income tax. There was an article at TheHill.com that mentions this.
rattlerjake

This is why we need to get all of these career politicians out. Liberals are like a woman with a checkbook and Conservatives are like the husband that is scared to say no because she’ll divorce him and take the money anyways. The credit card problems, the housing bust, courts loaded with bankruptcies, are all typical of liberals and their spending.
carolina

He references an article in Human Events.
spelunker

Republicans have little, or no, leadership in the Congress. Boehner and McConnell are both weak. They have no direction and are always ready to “negotiate” a deal that sounds like they did something. In reality, they just go along with Obama. McConnerll is so spineless he dosen’t even want to talk abut Obama’s reckless spending anymore. He just gives him whatever he wants.
rattlerjake

and Smith & Wesson to Washington and I’ll solve out debt crisis in one day!
liveforadrenaline

Until they find a way to toss Boehner and friends out on their keister then they really aren’t leaders at all.

We have a lot of new guys in the House who are battered and bruised continually by Boehner, and then we have guys who have been in the House for a while who proclaim to be conservatives while going around the country making fancy speeches and dodging getting any responsible work in the House.

Votes don’t cut it, folks… work your butts off to become head of a Committee and then get a coalition of your buddies together to get rid of Boehner…
rattlerjake

in the White House because he will run the rats out. That is why they forced him out of the Speaker of the House job. He will not hesitate to shoot them where they stand. I think that the only reason Newt wants to build an outpost on the moon is so there is a place to ship these liberals to get them off of this planet.
cam1

The House needs a leader and members with a spine. Look at how effective Nancy was in getting her agenda accomplished and how ineffective is Boehner is.

I think the Republican party is committing a mass suicide by ignoring its base.
swordofzorro

For the same reason the Republicans think for some godforsaken reason that beating up on each other in the primaries is a “good thing”. Polls now show that 20% of Republicans are leaning towards Obama this fall. If people want to see brawling they watch MMA. They had hoped to find sane, intelligent, leaders-to-be when watching the debates. Instead they got the equivalen of a junior high food fight.

How much of this is our candidates and how much is actually brought on the by the whore advisors that dance between camps on a whim and whisper bad advice to the sleep deprived candidates running helter-skelter between debates, talk shows, and people with cameras and microphones? The whole damn thing is a circus side show that has reduced these mature men to sniveling brats. And while our attention is diverted, the elected numbskulls who populate Washington are busy doing what they do best…spend money, finger point and then spend more money.

Eric, I’m throwing a bit of the blame on you, Joe Farrah, Ann Coulter and Chris Christie too. All your commentary has done is inflame the situation even more. All of you want to have your name in lights and have forgotten that voters are more sick and tired of in-fighting than Obama. More than anything else we need a united front againt the President’s machine and his minions in DC both Democrat and Republican. United means arm-in-arm. United means one clear message. United means showing the world that Republicans can field a group of principled leaders not covered in mud.

Throw the cameras and reporters out of CPAC. Pull the candidates into a locked room without their handlers and distill one message. I suggest a blend of each of their best ideas. Then make them agree the only enemy is Obama and those in DC doing his bidding. Then, stop all the comparing and contrasting in your collective editorials. Voters have seen and heard enough. No more debates. At this point, all effort should be on targeting the bad apples in congress and making the Senate go R.
rattlerjake

we need to vote out all of the homesteading GOP and all of the liberal members and put NEW and useful blood in. If there was ever a time that America needs a miracle, it’s now. We need to require the Supreme court to get off there asses and prosecute Obuthead for obtaining office under false pretenses, forging federal documents, and being an illegal alien, for starters, as well as those politicians that allowed him to circumvent the Constitution, and put them all in jail or execute them for treason. Then we need to restore this countries morality – send all of the “butt-pirates” to the moon. This country has become so full of “Pussies” it’s ridiculousand that is our downfall.
http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

Live from CPAC, birther ban!
cbartlett

You need a better analogy. I am a conservative and a woman and I have been in charge of our family checkbook for 30+ years because my husband is the one who would spend too much!
I still like this one I saw yesterday:
“Clint Eastwood was wrong. It’s not halftime, it’s the 2 minute warning in the 4th quarter. We’re down 15 trillion to zero and half our team is rooting for the opponent.”

It’s not just liberals. Progressive Republicans can be just as bad with the spending.
acat

Neil zapped him earlier today.

Mew
http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

Not sure if he was a birther or just a moby, but he’s gone.
Repair_Man_Jack

Nt.
cbartlett

BUT it needs to be done by the states, NOT the feds. Just give those highway gas tax funds BACK to the states to do what they need to do. States can’t print money and will have to work with a balanced budget approach to any projects. Washington just takes a huge cut off the top, hands a small percentage back to states/local governments, and then tells them how they have to do it!

Our business (civil engineering design for roads & utilities) might actually stand to get some economic advantage from a stimulus like this but we wouldn’t touch anything with fed backing right now. You cannot imagine the strings attached to fed funding from HUD, DOT or EPA. I have a whole list of horror stories of things those agencies have made cities, design professionals and contractors do that you wouldn’t dream of doing (i.e. spending money on) in the reasonable, for-profit business world. There is no where to go to appeal a stupid decision. The buck stops with whatever idiot on the phone that the agency has assigned to your project. We have even called our elected representatives and their answer is “Oh – we can’t do anything about the _____ (fill in the blank with the appropriate agency). They have their own rules and policies.” OK – think about that. If your ELECTED officials can’t do anything with these rouge agencies – WHO CAN? Oh how I wish we could have had Rick Perry in there demolishing these agencies. Sigh.
http://www.plumbbobblog.com Plumb_Bob

We made infrastructure into government’s job, and now it’s crumbling and government has no repair fund set aside to fix it. That’s mismanagement.

I wonder how a private bridge owner would handle this? I wonder what our nation would have been like with privately-owned roads and bridges rather than public?

Let’s find out.
acat

to move troops and materiel quickly to the four corners of our country. The benefits to commerce, just like the benefits of the internet, are a side effect,not the primary benefit.

I have no objection to the DoD pointing out some roads which are military-critical – but the rest should be State problems, not Federal.

There’s no justification I can find, for instance, for I-80 and I-88 to both be Federally funded – I-88 should revert back to being supported by the State of Illinois .. specifically the Illinois Tollway Authority, who sold the bonds to build the boondoggle.

Mew
creeper

…to get rich. No, not building roads. Making signs. “This project funded by the American Redistribute and Repress Act”.
phelbin

the credit for regaining power in 2010. A few weeks ago Mr. Erickson wrote, “…Conservatives and the Tea Party fueled the movement that put the GOP leadership back in power in 2010, and they’ve rewarded us with nothing but contempt.”

GOP leadership hates Conservatives just as much as the liberals do…that’s how far to the left they’ve moved. This is why it’s so important to send true Conservatives to Congress in 2012, and to keep Mittens Romneycare out of the Oval Office.
creeper

of some pol’s BIL in Rockford needing work for his construction company.

I’m in far eastern Iowa. US 30 runs straight as a string from here to Chicago. Even with the 55 mph speed limit and a couple of stops at intersecting highways it’s still quicker than I-88, which runs you twenty miles north out of your way and back down again.

Yet no one drives it because we’ve been brainwashed to believe interstates are always faster.
tnguy

I would wager that a significant majority in both houses of congress -both parties – can not explain the difference in a million, billion, and trillion.
GOP Politix

In most cases. We can’t trust the guy. Haven’t ‘Conservatives’ learned anything over the years??

This is why our nation is in such a great mess. Look at history!
fightnright

hi swordofzorro, since you say that “polls (multiple) now show” have you read any major scientific polling (gallup, rasmussen, etc.) that supports that claim? I’ve heard WND (linked to Drudge this morning) has been known to do push-polling, and I haven’t seen complete sample data on the poll , so I’m curious about the validity of that conclusion.

Sorry if the question was asked in another thread, but has Neil taken a look at this? thanks!
remalimo

Newt maybe damaged goods but he can shape up the RINO’s and get the Budget under control. He has done IT before by stepping on toes and making thinks (Cut the Budget) happen. That is why he has so many enemies in DC they don’t like him because he has made enemies of the RINO’s.
kenchely

The problem is that there are perhaps 10% of the people who are conservatives but are not particularly committed to the Republican party. When a conservative candidate has personal baggage, they drop off, because most of them are conservative out of a commitment to moral principles that they see betrayed by these candidates. This is particularly true of women.

They will vote for a personally moral Republican over a personally moral Democrat; but if the Republican has baggage, they either vote Democrat or stay home. Remember, if the Republican and the Democrat both have baggage, their friendly TV network will tell them all about the Republican’s baggage and hardly mention, if at all, the Democrat’s baggage–and then only in order to downplay its significance. So they draw the message that the Democrat is more moral than the Republican, and don’t vote Republican.

There’s a reason that every poll, while both Romney and Santorum are running about even with Obama, and even Paul is only a few points behind Obama, right about the margin of error, shows Newt seriously behind. You’re not going to be able to make that up later, because of that particular segment, people whose votes you need, but Newt can’t get.
mikeymike143

didnt the 2010 election results show that the american people dont support this type of nonsense?
http://908StraightSt.wordpress.com/ mbecker908

crazy to get it passed as long as he had a few hundred million in earmarks in it.
carolynr

http://thehayride.com/2011/08/the-donkey-whisperer/

Now on a more serious note…the XL Pipeline deal is in the bill or so I hear…and that is why the Republicans are in on this.

My thing…Boehner…buck up, get a “clean” bill, stop adding all this BS and vote this thing DOWN.

If you want the XL Pipeline….and WE DO…then write a bill…no amendments…the bill. If McConnell can’t get some Democrats to come over on the energy thing…Well…I think these people need to go this next election cycle….WE HAVE TO GET CONSERVATIVES BACK INTO OFFICE.
Dave_A

It’s that baggage – especially the kind Newt and Bill Clinton both share – makes us move a candidate almost to the bottom of the pile (it would be ‘to the bottom’, but that spot is reserved for Ron Paul) in the primaries…

Not just because he can’t win – which he can’t…

But because a man who can’t be trusted to keep his family life in order, can’t be trusted with the far more difficult task of being President.

When you ADD TO THAT the fact that the man in question is a waffling career politician, who’s supported an individual mandate, worked for government entities conservatives want abolished, and in general seems committed to absolutely nothing besides self-promotion…

Newt gives us no reason to ignore his ‘baggage’.
Dave_A

For his now-legendary inability to keep it in his pants, at a time when the GOP was trying to run Clinton out of town for the same offense…
WillWong

He resigned from his House seat before the start of the 1999 session after a loss of 5 seats but the majority remained with the GOP.
WillWong

Fact is Clinton was not impeached for his inability to keep it in his pants. He was impeached for 1) Perjury, and 2) Obstruction of Justice.
6t9boss

infratsurcture is failing is because ‘We” agreed to pay taxes for “Goods and Services” in society. What has happened is that Gov’t employees retiring at 50 with 6 figure benefits packages are now sucking most of the money “WE” agreed to pay for Goods and Services…We DID AGREE to pay Retirement Benefits and HealthCare; Unions and Politicians DID THAT!. The contract is broken and no one is willing to fix it.
The pension plans and healthcare costs are what is killing all the Gov’t programs. The Post Office is broke because of Pension plans not because they are not making money!
rhampton

“Part of the reason is because highway spending is kryptonite to conservatives. You want to undermine conservative principles, just throw a roads building scheme into legislation.”

Is there something from the AEI or the like the explains this a bit more thoroughly? I’m trying to understand what makes this particular issue so difficult for elected conservatives.
Creedo

I’m curious to learn where you’re seeing polls that show Santorum polling anywhere near the margin of error with BHO. Everything I’ve seen has both Newt and Santorum trailing by a margin hovering around 6-10%..
mikeymike143

guess so.
Dave_A

Is that infastructure money is spent on massive acts of stupidity, rather than on what the people actually want.

By our economic choices, the people want infastructure to cater to the following:

1) Single-occupant automobiles
2) Air travel
3) Automobile-focused mass-transit, such as car ferries that operate in leiu of bridges (see the Puget Sound ferry system as an example).

Instead, we get light rail, subsidies for electric busses & trolly-cars, and so on – ‘infastructure’ money is wasted on ‘infastructure’ very few people use, because it is deemed ‘politically correct’ to push against the overwhelming desire to transport ourselves, alone, in personally owned cars.

The best thing that could ever be done for the highway-trust fund, is to BAN federal funding of land-based mass transit.

BTW, roads are a ‘public good’ best constructed by government & paid for by taxes – hence the inclusion of ‘construction of post roads’ as a Federal power in the Constitution.

The problem with every road, street & bridge being private, is the horrendous inefficiency created by having to manage disparate payment and collection methods for each individual company that may own a specific item or segment of infrastructure. It’s as absurd as privatizing the military.
Dave_A

The ‘post roads’ clause applies quite well to the IHS and US-Route system – the Constitution does not specify how many roads the clause allows, and as our population grows, the number of roads needed will continue to increase…

The problem isn’t with the road construction part of transportation spending, it’s with the immense waste that is urban mass transit.
Dave_A

Thanks to the ultra-radical, no-compromise-ever wing of the Tea Party knocking out good regionally-appropriate candidates in the 2010 primaries…

Since the Democrats still control the Senate & the Presidency, they ARE going to win the majority of fights. Period.

This is why running someone like Christine O’Donelll in Deleaware was an abject mistake.

Things would be different if we had any real strength in the Senate…
Dave_A

It’s easy to sell a transporation-related project to the ‘average voter’, by making him think that the money will be spent to fix potholes in front of his house (crumbling infastructure rhetoric – lots of people relate to it thinking that the money will go to things they really use), and to reduce congestion/add lanes to the freeway he uses to get to work…

However, when it’s all said and done, the potholes are still there & the money goes to build ‘light rail’, expand bus routes, or reduce the number of lanes on the Interstate by converting existing ones to ‘HOT’ or “HOV’ garbage…

The problem, is that voters don’t get this scam, so they eagerly support more transpiration projects…. And they demand support for such from their representatives….

A good deal of the ‘trust-fund overreach’ in the current bill is all mass-transit garbage – money for trains & busses no one will ride, and HOV lanes that will sit empty while the rest of the road runs bumper-to-bumper.
Dave_A

The ONLY way it will get passed, is if it’s tagged on to something that Obama absolutely demands….

There are enough votes to pass a straight up bill, but not enough to override an Obama veto.

Therefore, if we want Keystone XL before 2013, we have to do it as a rider. This is also how we got national parks opened up to defensive gun-carry – by attaching it to the abhorrent & unstoppable credit-card bill Obama demanded back when the Dems still ruled Congress….

It’s the way the game is played.
Dave_A

Simply because if left to the states, there are far too many who would blow the money on mass transit & urbanist social-engineering.

The only way to ensure a uniform & efficient transporation infastructure, is for the Feds to manage it & set some standards… The first being ‘if it doesn’t ride on 4 wheels, float, fly, or tow a semi-trailer, it’s not a priority’….

And there is a Constitutional clause to support this, too…

There’s a point where ‘states first’ becomes antifederalisim/regionalisim – and it’s at that point that it becomes BAD.
carolynr

Get the Federal Government Out of Everything…except what is spelled out in the Constitution.

Democrats…the Party of Corruption
Republicans…The Party of Dumb
quill67

justified it by calling them national defense roads. Roads are critical to moving supplies and so they are justified for that purpose as well.
Rudy

Polls in my house now show support for Newt Gingrich is at 75%. Followed by 25% support for Mickey Mouse. Among registered voters, support for Newt is at 100%!
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fightnright

n/t

RS

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House Conservatives Support Barack Obama’s Latest Stimulus

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