U.S. Jobs Picture Darkens -- Payrolls Shrink for First Time This Year as Census Work Winds Down
Per the Wall Street Journal:
President Obama hailed the June 2010 jobs report as more evidence that "we're headed in the right direction," and with any more such good news the U.S. economy will soon be where Japan was in its lost growth decade of the 1990s. If we're lucky.
Nonfarm payrolls fell 125,000, their first month of losses this year, as the government let 225,000 census workers go, the Labor Department said Friday. Private-sector employment grew by a slight 83,000 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis, and seems to have downshifted from average gains of nearly 200,000 in March and April.
This jobs recovery seems stuck in the Washington mud. The unemployment rate declined to 9.5% from 9.7% in May, but not because more jobs were available. Instead, 652,000 workers dropped out of the labor force, meaning they weren't counted as unemployed and looking for work. The average hours worked per week fell to 34.1 from 34.2, when employers should be adding to worker shifts given the big gains in productivity.
The economy shed jobs in June as meager private-sector hiring failed to make up for the end of thousands of temporary census worker jobs, the latest signal that an already-slow recovery might be shifting into an even lower gear.
The reality is that this is another disappointing jobs report at a time in the recovery when new hiring ought to be picking up. Economic growth turned positive about a year ago, and normal recoveries become self-sustaining: Job creation follows the pickup in growth, which means rising income, which leads to more consumer spending, which leads to more business confidence and investment, and even more job creation.
Some economists are downwardly revising forecasts for the second half of the year. Those at UBS Securities LLC on Friday estimated the economy would grow at a 2.5% annual rate in the second half of the year, compared with the 3% growth rate they previously expected. That kind of growth typically isn't enough to absorb new work-force entrants and bring down the jobless rate.
Financial Regulation: The Dodd-Frank Assault on Economic Recovery
From the Heritage Foundation Morning Bell:
Following the release of the 2,000-page Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill last Friday, fixed-income portfolio manager Christine McConnell told Businessweek: "Clarity is good. [Once financial institutions] understand the rules of the road they'll be able to accommodate their business models." There is only one problem: passage of the Dodd-Frank bill doesn't provide any clarity. In fact, it does the exact opposite. The New York Times explains: "The bill, completed early Friday and expected to come up for a final vote this week, is basically a 2,000-page missive to federal agencies, instructing regulators to address subjects ranging from derivatives trading to document retention. But it is notably short on specifics, giving regulators significant power to determine its impact."
In other words, this law is going to be continually rewritten by federal bureaucrats for years to come. And the continued uncertainty it will create is just the beginning of its faults:
Permanent Bailout Authority: The Dodd-Frank bill creates an "orderly liquidation" process by which regulators are empowered to seize financial institutions that they believe are in danger of failing and liquidate them. While the lack of a broadly accepted process for closing down large financial institutions helped lead to the massive bailouts of 2008 and 2009, this liquidation process is problematic. Federal regulators are granted broad powers to seize private firms they feel are in danger of default, and these powers are subject to insufficient judicial review. Such governmental discretion to seize private property is constitutionally troubling.
Trusting the Same Regulators that Failed Last Time: The legislation establishes a new 10-member Financial Stability Oversight Council composed of regulators that would be responsible for monitoring and addressing system-wide risks to the financial system. This council would also have nearly unlimited powers to draft financial firms into the regulatory system and even force them to sell off or close pieces of themselves. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to detect systemic risk before a crisis has occurred, and the council would serve mainly as a group to blame for failing at an almost impossible task. On the other hand, its huge powers are much more likely to destabilize the financial system by stifling innovative products while failing to detect dangers posed by existing ones.
Brand New Innovation Killing Regulators: The bill also creates a new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection with broad powers to regulate the financial products and services that can be offered to consumers. The new agency would nominally be part of the Federal Reserve System, but it would have extraordinary autonomy. This autonomy would impede the efforts of existing regulators to ensure the safety and soundness of financial firms, as rules imposed by the new agency would conflict with that goal. For many consumers, this would make credit more expensive and harder to get.
Micromanaging the Market: The conference committee also added a form of the "Volcker rule" which would largely prohibit any bank or other institution with FDIC-insured deposits from undertaking proprietary trading or from owning or sponsoring hedge funds or private equity funds. While the legislation does reject the near-total ban on such investments, the difference between legitimate and traditional activities and those the Volcker rule seeks to ban would be difficult, if not impossible, to determine. Attempting to do so would require an intrusive, expensive regulatory compliance system that by its nature would micromanage day-to-day activities.
Fannie and Freddie Forever: Despite much rhetoric about ending bailouts, the bill does nothing to address Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two of the largest recipients of federal bailout money. These two government-sponsored enterprises, now in federal receivership, helped fuel the housing bubble. When it popped, taxpayers found themselves on the hook for some $150 billion in bailout money. The failure to address their future is a serious error and shows just how hollow are claims that this agreement will prevent future crises.
These are just some of the major flaws in a bill that is just one House and Senate vote away from President Barack Obama's desk (a fuller list can be found here). But final passage is not as sure today as it looked Friday. The passing of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) leaves the majority one vote short of the 60 needed to move for a final vote. In addition, the insertion of an estimated $20 billion in new taxes has Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) reconsidering his original vote in favor of the measure. Scott released a statement explaining: "My fear is that these costs would be passed onto consumers in the form of higher bank, ATM and credit card fees and put a strain on lending at the worst possible time for our economy. I’ve said repeatedly that I cannot support any bill that raises taxes."
Explaining that the Dodd-Frank bill would force banks to either take on more risk to recoup earnings diminished by reform or behave too conservatively in order to avoid losses, financial analyst Chris Mutascio summarized the ultimate effect of the legislation: "Pick your poison—neither tastes good to us and we believe neither is particularly good for the economy and job growth."
House Passes Campaign Finance Disclose Act
Fearful of what election day, November 2010, will bring them, liberals in Congress passed HR 5175, the 'Disclose Act,' a bill disguised as campaign finance reform. Clearly unconstitutional and a violation of the 1st Amendment, this bill is seen as a cynical attempt to thwart the coming tidal wave of conservatism and Republican victory in the November mid-term elections.
In January 2010 the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission struck down the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform bill, which put limits on political spending. This decision removed those limits so that corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts of money sponsoring campaign ads.
In response Democrats crafted legislation in both chambers that would require stricter methods of campaign finance disclosure on corporate political spending.
The ‘Disclose Act’ would require the heads of corporations to personally appear in any sponsored political ads and endorse the message. It would also require them to reveal the names of the top five donors who helped foot the advertising bill. The legislation also prohibits foreign controlled corporations from contributing to political campaigns.
House Minority Leader John Boehner said in a statement, "This bill would muzzle small businesses but protect labor unions…This is a backroom deal to shred our Constitution for raw, ugly, partisan gain."
The bill passed 219 to 206 in the House. Only two Republicans, Reps. Anh "Joseph" Cao and Michael Castle voted in favor of the bill.
The bill has come under fire recently for carve-outs. In response to pressure from the NRA, House Democrats made an amendment last week to exempt organizations that have over 1 million members, have been in existence for at least a decade, and receive less than 15 percent of their funding from corporations.
The Chamber of Commerce, which has been avidly opposing the legislation, said the "Democratic majority in the House has jammed through a piece of legislation that clearly violates the Constitution, as well as basic principles of fairness and equity."
Heritage Foundation Morning Bell: The Jobless Obama Recovery
This Wednesday in Pittsburgh, President Barack Obama defended his administration's economic policies telling the audience at Carnegie Mellon University: "Now, I've never believed that government has all the answers. Government cannot and should not replace businesses as the true engine of growth and job creation." But that is exactly what the President's big government policies are doing. Last week, USA Today reported that in the first quarter of 2010, thanks to President Obama's failed $862 economic stimulus, paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history while government-provided benefits — from Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other programs — rose to a record high.
And now the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor and Statistics released its monthly jobs report today showing that the economy added 431,000 jobs in May. But don't let that number fool you. Of those 431,000 jobs, 411,000 jobs were temporary government Census jobs. In fact, private sector job growth actually fell in May, from 231,000 new private sector jobs in April to just 41,000 new private sector jobs in May. Combining the private and public sectors--the nation's unemployment rate fell to 9.7% as 286,000 workers left the labor force. In total the U.S. economy has now lost a net of 2.2 million jobs since President Barack Obama signed his stimulus bill and his administration is now 7.2 million jobs short of what he promised the American economy would support by 2010.
While there is little doubt our resilient economy is finally recovering, it is also becoming increasingly clear that this administration's policies are making it difficult for private sector firms to produce robust job growth. Obamacare not only raises taxes by $503 billion through 2019, but it also burdens small businesses with new 1099 IRS paperwork every time they do more than $600 in business with another entity, and it imposes an employer mandate which makes it harder for small businesses to hire new workers. Then there is Obama's budget which raises taxes on the small businesses that earn 72% of all small business income, raises capital gains taxes to 20%, and raises taxes on dividends to 39.6%. And don't forgot the recently passed tax bill in the House which manages to add billions in debt while adding on a job-killing tax on American corporations that compete overseas and a job-killing tax on innovation-creating venture capital partnerships.
But the Obama administration does not plan on stopping there. Desperate to shift the focus from their lack of leadership, President Obama used the Deepwater Horizon oil spill Wednesday to renew his call for further regulation of the energy industry. Since the Kerry-Lieberman cap and tax bill called for now verboten increased oil development, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is signaling he wants pursue a renewable-energy-only path like Sen. Jeff Bingaman's (D-NM) American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACELA) which would mandate that electricity sellers produce a growing percentage of their power from renewable energy sources every two years. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis has crunched the numbers and found that at an RES would: 1) Raise electricity prices by 36 percent for households and 60 percent for industry; 2) Cut national income (GDP) by $5.2 trillion between 2012 and 2035; 3) Cut national income by $2,400 per year for a family of four; 4) Reduce employment by more than 1,000,000 jobs; and 5) Add more than $10,000 to a family of four’s share of the national debt by 2035.
The Census jobs obtained by 411,000 Americans last month are temporary jobs. That means by the end of this year, those 411,000 Americans will be through with temporary government work and will be looking for real work in the private sector. But the private sector will not be able to adsorb them. Not when the Obama administration is forcing them to pay higher taxes, higher health care costs, and higher energy costs. Our economy will continue to bounce back from the recession. But thanks to Obama we can expect near double-digit unemployment
Obama Healthcare Summit Lays an Egg
Normally we would put a story about the Healthcare Summit on our healthcare page. But this wasn’t about healthcare. It was an attempt to embarrass Republicans. It backfired.
Instead we got Healthcare Kabuki Theater. We got Obama, hogging the floor saying “I’m the President” while sitting there looking like he was presiding over a city council meeting debating some water and land use bond. We got NY Rep. Louise Slaughter and Harry Reid going for the emotion. Slaughter was gassing around about a women using her dead sister’s dentures. Harry Reid opined about cleft palates. Is there an epidemic of denture shortages and a lack of cleft palate surgeries in the United States? We got Obama upbraiding John McCain saying "We're not campaigning."
We got Joe Biden’s open mic moment – Biden to Sen. Eric Cantor:
Biden: How you doing Eric?
Cantor: Not bad Mr. Vice President
Biden: Good, doing alright. It's easy being Vice President believe me.
Cantor: It's like being a grandparent and not the parent.
Biden: Yeah that's it.
We did get substantive suggestions from the assembled Republicans on Healthcare reform which were dismissed by Obama and the Democrats. Over the seven hour marathon Republicans spoke for just 58 minutes.
Ironically pollster Frank Luntz, appearing on the O'Reilly Factor, wired up 13 Republican and 11 Democrat citizens to gauge their responses to the proceedings. The Democrats said they were surprised to hear that Republicans actually had real proposals on how Healthcare Reform might be achieved.
Note to Democrats: The Republicans have been proposing 4 to 5 key alternatives to ObamaCare for the last year. The mainstream liberal press has imposed a blackout on this information and Obama, Harry Reid and Nanacy Pelosi have been lying to you. They have consistently said "Where are the Republican points" all the while calling the
Republicans the party of 'no'. This is proof positive of the complete collapse of objective journalism. If it doesn't fit the liberal/progressive narrative it doesn't get published.
Excerpted from the Wall St. Journal:
Defining ObamaCare Down
February 26, 2010
http://online.wsj.com/article/ SB10001424052748704479404575087311436130980.html
A bipartisan health-care consensus will remain elusive after yesterday's marathon summit, as expected, though viewers who stuck out the full seven-plus hours could be forgiven for wondering what happened to all the liberals. General anesthesia? To listen to President Obama and his closest Democratic allies, you'd think John McCain had won the election and their bill had been drafted by Paul Ryan, Tom Coburn and the scholars at the American Enterprise Institute.
In his opening statement, Mr. Obama said the key issue is "figuring out how can we control the huge expansion of entitlements," especially "the exploding costs of Medicare." He said Congress must fix "some fundamental structural problems" in U.S. health care, with reforms that lower spending by increasing "choice and competition."
If only politics hadn't intruded—"politics I think ended up trumping practical common sense," he claimed—peace would reign upon the Earth and the two parties could "focus on where we agree because there actually is some significant agreement on a host of issues."
It's as if the last year didn't happen. Only minutes into the discussion, it became clear the Democratic strategy was to portray this debate as somehow taking place between the 49 yard lines. Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus chimed in that "The main point is, we basically agree."
The morning was dominated by an argument over whether ObamaCare would lower insurance costs, and the exchange was telling. Republicans, led by Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, rightly said that premiums would increase, while the President disagreed. "This is an example of where we've got to get our facts straight," he said, in keeping with his strategy of depicting any disagreement as factually challenged or politically motivated.
One fact is that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that premiums in the individual market would jump by 10% to 13% in 2016 because the government will mandate that consumers buy richer benefits than they otherwise would. Mr. Obama eventually conceded that point but said these mandates are simple consumer protections. "Yes, I am paying 10% to 13% more because instead of buying an apple, I'm getting an orange," Mr. Obama said. "We want competition, we just want some minimum standards."
Mr. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican, posed the fundamental question: "Should people in Washington decide exactly how this works and what you can and cannot buy?" We thought the GOP acquitted itself fairly well, noting the irresponsibility of using Medicare cuts to float a new entitlement when the status quo has $37 trillion in unfunded liabilities. They also focused on smaller, incremental reforms that might do some modest good.
Mr. Obama claimed that "Every proposal that health-care economists say will reduce health-care costs, we've tried to adopt," yet this is demonstrably untrue. The White House has delayed its own excise tax on ultra-expensive health plans (previously sold as the key cost-control measure) until 2018, well after Mr. Obama is out of office, assuming he wins a second term.
The point of yesterday's session was to give a soothing, moderate political gloss to a government health-care takeover that will raise costs, greatly expand the entitlement state, and reduce choice and competition—the opposite of everything Mr. Obama claims.
State of the Union…State of Confusion
First there was FDR's 'New Deal'...then came JFK's 'New Frontier' followed by LBJ's 'Great Society'. Now, building on Barack Obama's vow to "fundamentally transform" the United States of America comes the 'New Foundation'. Reacting to the Massachusetts election Obama went down the populist road in his State of the Union address. As usual he took aim at all of the convenient targets and scapegoated all that "bedevils" our society. The result…Americans are angry, but not necessarily at the favorite targets of the Progressives:
· He blamed Bush and/or the “policies of the last eight years” or the “last decade” at least six times.
· Americans are angry at "bad behavior on Wall Street."
· It is time to "slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas."
· Lobbyists are trying to "kill" financial regulation.
· American "cynicism" is the result of "selfish" bankers,
· CEOs who "reward" themselves "for failure" and lobbyists who "game the system." (No mention of Cornhusker Kickbacks or backroom union deals for Obamacare)
· On the deficit he blamed Bush saying that in 2000 there was a $200 Million surplus…in 2008 the deficit was $1 trillion (it was actually $500 Billion). Obama didn’t mention that he has exploded that deficit to $1.7 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office shows that over the first three years of the Obama Presidency, 2009-2011, the federal government will borrow an estimated $3.7 trillion. That is more than the entire accumulated national debt for the first 225 years of U.S. history. By 2019, the interest payments on this debt will be larger than the budget for education, roads and all other nondefense discretionary spending.
Obama also handed out some State of the Union goodies:
A new jobs bill: $30 Billion in TARP funds and tax credits for hiring,
elimination of the capital gains tax on investment…curiously not on profits,
and innovation and investment in green tech (forget all the climate fraud at the U.N.), offshore drilling, nuclear and coal (he will get an argument from the envirnment lobby on those points
Education investment: Obama offered a $10,000-a-year tax credit for college tuition, student-loan payments to be capped at 10 percent of a graduate's income and that the debt be extinguished after 20 years (10 if he or she works in public service, a perverse form of indentured servitude.)
Immigration reform: The strangest line of the night occurred when he said, referring to immigration, that there is “unity in our incredible diversity”. This, of course, is the exact opposite of E pluribus unum…from many one.
Spending Freeze/ Spending Fraud: As part of the new “austerity program” Obama proposed a 3 year spending freeze to take effect in 2011 trim the deficit by just 3 percent. Critics immediately jumped on that nugget of lunacy. Labeling Obama’s plan for a spending freeze a “fraud,” Dr. Charles Krauthammer said that the plan is really a ruse to try to fool the American people into thinking that he is cutting spending when in actuality it is “a racket that locks” in the department budgets of many federal agencies at the “artificially high levels” that he raised them to during his first year in office.
Krauthammer: “The reason it’s a fraud is that what Obama is doing here is not just excluding all the other spending we know about, discretionary spending, social security and the military, and it doesn’t include the stimulus. What he’s saying is, ‘I’m going to do a freeze on the regular departments.’ But what he doesn’t tell you is that last year, in their first year in office when they had a free ride in spending, they ratcheted up the spending for all of these departments astronomically, an average over the last half of fiscal ‘09 and all of fiscal ‘10 an average of about 20%. Now that’s huge because normally year over year you’d increase a department’s spending by 3%, 4%, especially with low inflation.
So for example, last year alone they increased the EPA budget by 35%. So if you’re instituting a freeze, what you’re doing is you’re ratcheting in, you’re locking in the higher spending that Obama slid in last year.”
Insulting the Supreme Court: The most astonishing part of the speech was when Obama took aim at the Supreme Court for their decision that declared the Mccain-Feingold bill unconstitutional.
Obama: "Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections. Well, I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities."
One would think that a a graduate of Harvard Law School at least get his facts right. But these are different times and ideology trumps all.
In an attempt to use the high court for political purposes Obama has smeared them, and intimidated them to influence decisions.
Let’s look at the facts. Excerpted from the Wall St. Journal:
The Court didn't reverse "a century of law," but merely two more recent precedents, one from 1990 and part of another from 2003. Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce in 1990 had set the Court in a markedly new direction in limiting independent corporate campaign expenditures. This is the outlier case that needed to be overturned.
Mr. Obama is also a sudden convert to stare decisis. Does he now believe that all Court precedents of a certain duration are sacrosanct, such as Plessy v. Ferguson (separate but equal, 1896), which was overturned by Brown v. Board (1954)? Or Bowers v. Hardwick (a ban on sodomy, 1986), which was overturned by Lawrence v. Texas (2003)?
The President's claim about "foreign entities" bankrolling U.S. political campaigns is also false, since the Court did not overrule laws limiting such contributions. His use of "foreign" was a conscious attempt to inflame public and Congressional opinion against the Court. Coming from a President who fancies himself a citizen of the world, and who has gone so far as foreswear American exceptionalism, this leap into talk-show nativism is certainly illuminating. What will they think of that one in the cafes of Berlin?
Nearly every president finds something to criticize about the Supreme Court, but not every one gets to do it to the justices’ faces, on national television, in the State of the Union speech. It is an extraordinary thing for a president to trash a decision of the Supreme Court in such a venue. Six of the nine justices in attendance, guests of the Congress, sat there in stony silence. Justice Samuel Alito Jr. shook his head vigorously, and mouthed what seemed to be the words, "Not true." It wasn't exactly a Joe Wilson "YOU LIE!" moment. It was, however, a rivealing moment, a sign of how low progressives will stoop to score a political point.
Obama's scorn and disdain for the high court was on full display...he violated the separation of powers and he owes the Supreme Court and the nation an apology.
SHOT HEARD 'ROUND THE WORLD
By DICK MORRIS
Published on TheHill.com on January 19, 2010
On the rude arch that spanned the flood
In the April breeze their flag unfurled
Here the embattled farmer stood
And fired the shot heard round the world -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Scott Brown's win of the Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy means that any Republican can win at any time in any place. Such are the fortunes to which the Democratic Party has fallen under the ministrations of President Barack Obama.
Will this latest defeat, coming on top of the loss of New Jersey and Virginia, reduce the conceit of this man? Will it cause him to second-guess the course he has staked out for his party and our nation? Not bloody likely.
But what it will do is bring good Republican candidates out of the woodwork to challenge incumbent Democrats who hold seats once thought to be unassailable.
Throughout the nation, the same pattern repeats itself: Democratic incumbents running in districts they had assumed to be safe but which are safe no more. But, again and again, there is no viable Republican who has, as yet, stepped up to challenge them. You can't beat somebody with nobody. And the Republican Party has a candidate shortage.
As of this writing, there are no strong candidates to challenge Democratic Sens. Patty Murray (Wash.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Evan Bayh (Ind.) and Russ Feingold (Wis.). Yet each of these senators is vulnerable. If Ted Kennedy's seat can go Republican, so can theirs.
Right now, the Republicans will likely hold all their open Senate seats. Of the six seats held by retiring Republicans, only Missouri, Ohio and New Hampshire are really in play, and the GOP candidate in each of the three holds a strong lead.
Then there are five Democratic seats likely to fall to the Republicans.
* The Delaware seat vacated by Vice President Joe Biden will probably go to Mike Castle (R), the at-large congressman who has won 11 statewide races since 1980. Biden's son, Beau Biden, has made noises about running, but he will probably read the handwriting on the wall and stay home.
* When Sen. Byron Dorgan (D) dropped out, he basically conceded his North Dakota seat to Gov. John Hoeven, a highly popular Republican.
* Michael Bennet (D), the senator appointed to fill the Colorado seat held by Ken Salazar, faces a strong challenge from Jane Norton, the popular former lieutenant governor. She'll probably win.
* Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) has defied her state one too many times when she voted for healthcare. She'll pay the price in November.
* As will Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who lags behind both of his possible opponents. With his son running for governor, Reid may not even run for fear of dragging his boy down with him. The family needs one of them to be in office. It's how they make their money.
That brings the GOP to 45 seats.
Next are two races where the Republican has a good chance:
* In Pennsylvania, part-time Republican, part-time Democrat and full-time opportunist Sen. Arlen Specter is running for reelection in a primary against Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak. Don't count on Specter staying in the race. And count on his losing the primary if he does. The Republican, Pat Toomey, should win the race in November easily against Specter, with more difficulty against Sestak.
* Obama's Senate seat is up in Illinois and Mark Kirk, the Republican congressman who has taken the lead in pushing for vigorous sanctions against Iran, is tied with his potential Democratic rivals. We should pick up both seats. That'd be 47.
In California, Carly Fiorina is only a few points behind Sen. Barbara Boxer (D). It's hard to imagine California going Republican, but easier than to have visualized Massachusetts doing so. That would make 48.
But then the Republican Party runs out of candidates. Anyone want a Senate seat? Gillibrand (or Harold Ford, if he wins the primary) will not be hard to defeat. Murray won with only 55 percent of the vote last time. Wyden got only 54 percent. Bayh is from solidly Republican Indiana, and Feingold is too liberal for anyplace this side of Cuba.
Hopefully, the Brown race will kindle the fires of ambition in incipient candidates in these key states. They need to win at least three of the five to take control.
When it comes to spending, the Democrats who run Washington can't decide on their message. On the one hand, as President Obama said this week, they claim we have to "spend our way out of this recession." On the other, they keep telling us the deficit is too large and isn't "sustainable."
The Senate on Sunday passed a 1,088-page $445 billion omnibus spending bill (Conference Report to Accompany H.R. 3288, FY 2010)
with increased budgets for major sections of the federal government, including health, education, law enforcement and veterans programs.
The bill, one of the last essential chores of Congress this year, passed 57 to 35 and goes to President Obama for his signature.
The House passed it's version of the omnibus bill, H.R. 3288, on Dec 10, which is a $410 Billion Omnibus spending bill with 5000 earmarks.
Anti-Wall Street Legislation
Prior to that, The House of Representatives, in a display of anti-Wall Street sentiment, passed sweeping legislation on Dec. 11 that rewrites the rules governing financial markets, aiming to restrict the operations of big banks and the powers of the Federal Reserve.
The legislation, if enacted, would bring the biggest change to financial rules since the 1930s, changing business practices for everyone from mortgage brokers in California to traders on Wall Street. The vote advances a major White House initiative designed to tackle the perceived causes of last year's financial crisis.
The House's action isn't the final word. The Senate has yet to act, and an early version of its bill is different from the House version in many respects. But senators hope to have an agreement in principle by the end of December and to pass a bill in the first half of 2010.
This legislation comes on the heels of Bank of America paying back it's TARP money and CitiBank announcing it's intention to pay back its share of TARP.
Congress also announced its intention to raise the debt limit from $12.5 trillion to over $14 trillion to get the government through 2010.
An Inconvenient Democracy-The EPA aims to bully Congress and business with its carbon ruling
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said yesterday that her ruling that greenhouses gases are dangerous pollutants would "cement 2009's place in history" as the moment when the U.S. began "seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform." She's right that this is an historic decision, though not to her or the White House's credit, and "seizing" is the right term. President Obama isn't about to let a trifle like democratic consent impede his climate agenda.
With cap and trade blown apart in the Senate, the White House has chosen to impose taxes and regulation across the entire economy under clean-air laws that were written decades ago and were never meant to apply to carbon. With this doomsday machine activated, Mr. Obama hopes to accomplish what persuasion and debate among his own party manifestly cannot.
This reckless "endangerment finding" is a political ultimatum: The many Democrats wary of levelling huge new costs on their constituents must surrender, or else the EPA's carbon police will inflict even worse consequences.
The gambit is also meant to coerce businesses, on the theory that they'll beg for cap and trade once the command-and-control regulatory pain grows too acute—not to mention the extra bribes in the form of valuable carbon permits that Democrats, since you ask, are happy to dispense. Ms. Jackson appealed to "the science" and waved off any political implications, yet the formal finding was not coincidentally announced at the start of the U.N.'s Copenhagen climate conference (see above).
This ruling has been inevitable since at least April and we warned about it during Mr. Obama's campaign, but its cynicism and willfulness still astonish. The political threat is so potent precisely because invoking a faulty interpretation of the 1970 Clean Air Act will expose hundreds of thousands of "major" sources of emissions that produce more than 250 tons of an air pollutant in a year to the EPA's costly and onerous review process. This threshold might be reasonable for traditional "dirty" pollutants (such as NOX) but it makes no sense for ubiquitous carbon, which is the byproduct of almost all types of economic production.
The White House knows this, which is why earlier this fall Ms. Jackson announced a "tailoring rule" that limits this regulation to sources that emit more than 25,000 or more tons a year like coal-fired power plants and heavy manufacturing. Ms. Jackson claims this unilateral rewrite of a statute is a concession, but its real purpose is to dodge a political backlash while still preserving the EPA's ability to threaten business and recalcitrant Democrats.
For now, this decision moves into the courts, and years if not decades of litigation. Yet the decision really is historic: The White House has opened a Pandora's box that will be difficult to close, that is breathtakingly undemocratic, and that the country, if not liberal politicians, will come to regret.
ABC News: Jobs 'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts That Don't Exist
By JONATHAN KARL
Nov. 16, 2009
Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.
There's one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.
And ABC News has found many more entries for projects like this in places that are incorrectly identified.
Late Monday, officials with the Recovery Board created to track the stimulus spending, said the mistakes in crediting nonexistent congressional districts were caused by “human error”.
"We report what the recipients submit to us," said Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Board.
Pound told ABC News the board receives declarations from the recipients - state governments, federal agencies and universities - of stimulus money about what program is being funded.
"Some recipients clearly don't know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes," Pound said.
The issue has raised hackles on Capitol Hill.
Rep. David Obey, D-Wisc, who chairs the powerful House appropriations Committee, issued a paper statement demanding that the recovery.gov Web site be updated.
"The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous and the Administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes."
ABC News was able to locate several examples on the government's Web site outlining hundreds of millions of dollars spent and jobs created in Congressional districts that have been misidentified.
For example, recovery.gov says $34 million in stimulus money has been spent in Arizona's 86th congressional district in a project for the Navajo Housing authority, which is actually located in the 1st congressional district.
The reporting problems are not limited to Arizona, ABC News found.
In Oklahoma, recovery.gov lists more than $19 million in spending -- and 15 jobs created -- in yet more congressional districts that don't exist.
In Iowa, it shows $10.6 million spent and 39 jobs created -- in nonexistent districts.
In Connecticut's 42nd district (which also does not exist), the Web site claims 25 jobs created with zero stimulus dollars.
The list of spending and job creation in fictional congressional districts extends to U.S. territories as well.
$68.3 million spent and 72.2 million spent in the 1st congressional district of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
$8.4 million spent and 40.3 jobs created in the 99th congressional district of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
$1.5 million spent and .3 jobs created in the 69th district and $35 million for 142 jobs in the 99th district of the Northern Mariana Islands.
$47.7 million spent and 291 jobs created in Puerto Rico's 99th congressional district.
House Passes ObamaCare 220-215
The disaster that is ObamaCare passed the House in the dead of night by a vote of 220-215 (yes, Brad Sherman voted for it). Thirty-nine Democrats jumped ship and voted against the bill...so from that point of view the bill was bi-partisan in that opposition was significant. The bill now goes on to the Senate. Hopefully it will be killed there.
Analysis:
Worst Bill Ever -- The Wall Street JournalClick Here
House Passes ObamaCare -- Here's What You Should Know Click Here
CBS Says White House Is Fudging Stimulus Jobs Numbers
CBS Says White House Is Fudging Stimulus Jobs Numbers
When Katie Couric and the folks at CBS start doubting what the Administration says about how effective February's economic stimulus package was, you know President Obama is in trouble.
Consider that on Thursday's CBS "Evening News," Chip Reid began a segment with the following startling statement about a jobs report card to be released by the White House Friday:
Well, Katie, that report is going to claim that the stimulus has already created or saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, but if the administration`s first effort at counting stimulus jobs is any guide, tomorrow`s numbers could be hard to believe.
Readers are advised to make sure youngsters are out of the room, for watching Katie and the Gang say the White House might be fudging numbers could be way too frightening for minors (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Terri Green, file photo):
KATIE COURIC, HOST: Now let`s get back to that $787 billion stimulus Anthony mentioned. Earlier this year, the president claimed it would create or save three million jobs. There are some questions about how many it may have created so far. Chip Reid is at the White House tonight. And, Chip, I know the administration is putting out a jobs report card tomorrow. What can you can tell us about that?
CHIP REID, CBS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Katie, that report is going to claim that the stimulus has already created or saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, but if the administration`s first effort at counting stimulus jobs is any guide, tomorrow`s numbers could be hard to believe.
REID: At a small college in Georgia, $100,000 in stimulus funds paid for trucks for students to practice for commercial driver`s licenses. Another $100,000 went for a modular classroom. The school reported to the government that 280 jobs were created.
In reality, not even close. That`s the number of students who benefited. It has nothing to do with jobs.
In Cocoa, Florida, a childcare center reported 129 jobs created by a stimulus grant. In fact, no jobs were created. The money was really used to increase the compensation and benefits of 129 existing employees.
Overall, it turns out the administration`s initial stimulus jobs report contained hundreds of errors as first reported by the Associated Press. Critics say if the kinds of errors found in that earlier report are repeated in Friday`s much more extensive job creation survey, it won`t be worth the paper it`s printed on.
CRAIG JENNINGS: We have, I think, a rough estimate at best. And at worst, these numbers are next to useless.
REID: The White House says the errors have already been corrected, that tomorrow`s jobs report has been double- and triple-checked for weeks, and that it will give an accurate, detailed look at the early success of the stimulus.
Republicans in Congress, though, predict the report will be a world- class example of government obfuscation.
REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R), OHIO: There is no factual way of determining how many jobs were saved or created.
REID: Those Republican critics also say they don`t understand how some stimulus projects will create any jobs. For example, half a million dollars to study social networks like FaceBook, and $219,000 to study the sex lives of female college freshmen. Katie.
COURIC: Chip Reid reporting from the White House tonight. Thanks, Chip.
Makes you wonder if White House communications director Anita Dunn is going to file a complaint with CBS.
After all, she didn't think it was right for Fox News's Chris Wallace to fact check the Adminstration.
President’s Council of Economic Advisers-Christina Romer
October 22, 2009 | House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH)
One of the authors of the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ is now saying the Obama Administration’s signature domestic initiative has already had its “greatest impact” on helping the economy – even though roughly three million private sector jobs have been lost since it became law in February. Dr. Christina Romer, chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, testified in front of the Joint Economic Committee just one day after new data showed that despite the “stimulus,” 49 out of 50 states have lost jobs in the last seven months.
Dr. Romer, who once predicted that the stimulus would create “about 3.5 million jobs,” also conceded today that unemployment would remain “severely elevated” and rise above 10 percent next year. Echoing a line of thought regularly expressed by Republicans, Dr. Romer testified that future economic growth would be dependent on the private sector. Republicans have offered =better solutions to help small businesses create jobs and get our economy moving again.
At his weekly press briefing today, House Republican Leader John Boehner commented on the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ that isn’t working:
Yesterday, new state-by-state jobs numbers came out, and they showed that 49 out of 50 states have lost jobs since the Democrats’ trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ was enacted. Ohio alone has lost nearly 100,000 jobs since February. The Speaker claimed that the ‘stimulus’ has ‘saved or created’ two million jobs yesterday. Yet the Speaker’s home state of California has lost more than 300,000 jobs. I was in California a couple weeks ago, and the people I ran into kept asking me, ‘Where are the jobs?’”
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