Despite Barack Obama's promises, it appears as though it will be business as usual in Washington with one exception; the Democrats have run amok. Not only are we lacking in checks and balances, but the so-called "economic stimulus bill" was drawn up and signed faster than the media could keep up with its provisions.Obama went from vowing to ban earmarks to supporting a bill that is riddled with them. It's the first of many promises Obama made as an up-and-coming politician who did not understand the politics of politics.
During the campaign, Americans were wooed by his inspiring rhetoric about change. Either Obama spouted promises simply to get elected or he really believed he could get things done like no one before him. Either way, it doesn't inspire much confidence now.
Included in the plan are $1,000 tax cuts for working couples, whether they earn enough money to pay income tax or not. This turns a "tax cut" into a welfare handout in some cases.
According to Republican Rep. Mike Pence, there are items in the bill that, perhaps, it could do without.
"In legislation before the Senate this week, $20 million for the removal of small to medium-sized fish passage barriers or $25 million to rehabilitate off-roading trails for ATVs is not going to put this economy back on track," Pence said. "And, it was exactly that kind of wasteful government spending that resulted in unanimous Republican opposition last week."
Most assuredly, America is in need of a plan and the basis of the economic stimulus plan was sound. However, thanks to Washington's typical quid pro quo style, the plan has snowballed into an out-of-control, monstrous spending plan. Looks like it's still "politics as usual" in Washington and, unfortunately, there's a rookie at the wheel.
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Washington (PTI): The support for the US President remains strong, with Barack Obama enjoying an approval rating of 67 percent among Americans for the way in which he has handled the government's effort to pass an economic stimulus bill, the latest Gallup poll has said
The Democrats and Republicans in the Congress, on the other hand, receive much lower approval ratings of 48 percent and 31 percent respectively, results of the poll released by Gallup has revealed. The polls are based on nationwide interviews conducted by Gallup between February 6-7.
In a statement, Gallup Poll said the survey underscore the degree to which Obama appears to be maintaining the upper hand over his opponents from a public opinion perspective as he and congressional leaders wrangle over the precise form and substance of a new economic stimulus plan.
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With Barack Obama’s victory in passing a massive stimulus package marred by days of bad press — as not a single House Republican backed the bill, his health czar went down in flames and his second pick for commerce secretary walked away — the administration has been cut down to size, and lost some of its bipartisan sheen.
Such, at least, has been the beltway chatter, but so far the numbers don’t back it up.
Obama’s approval rating remains well above 60 percent in tracking polls. A range of state pollsters said they’d seen no diminution in the president’s sky-high approval ratings, and no improvement in congressional Republicans’ dismal numbers.
And that’s before the stimulus creates billions of dollars in spending on popular programs, which could, at least temporarily, further boost Obama’s popularity.
“It’s eerie — I read the news from the Beltway, and there’s this disconnect with the polls from the Midwest that I see all around me,” said Ann Seltzer, the authoritative Iowa pollster who works throughout the Midwest.
That’s a perception treasured by Obama’s aides, who spent a two-year presidential campaign safeguarding “the brand,” as they called it, of a new, post-partisan sort of political figure.
With the stimulus safely passed, they say they’re relying on the steady support of a populace that, after a closely watched election, is tuning out the Washington cut and thrust, and views Obama as a high-minded reformer and his Republican rivals as bitter partisans.
“You shouldn’t judge his success in reaching out by the vote count in either chamber of Congress — you’ve really got to judge it based more on what people in the country are thinking and saying,” said John Del Cecato, a media adviser to Obama’s campaign and former partner of Obama aide David Axelrod.
“If you look at any number of public polls, and private polls support this, it’s not just Democrats and independents who support the way he’s gone about advancing the stimulus plan — it’s a certain amount of Republicans too.”
A CBS News poll released February 5, for instance, found 81 percent of Americans said Obama is reaching out to congressional Republicans, while just 41 percent said the congressional Republicans were looking for bipartisanship.
“There have been a number of different surveys that have shown that Americans perceive that Obama is extending a hand of cooperation, a hand that the Republican leadership is not reciprocating — that’s very striking in the data,” said Mark Blumenthal, the editor of Pollster.com, who also noted that Obama has managed to remain popular even with some Republicans.
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I just don't get you conservative: you celebrate the Bush $1.3 trillion (yes, trillion, more than the stimulus package) tax cut bill but think the stimulus package is crap. Looks like Bush gave away $1.3 triliion and it led to the worst recession since the depressio
n. How did that work our for us? Let's see what this does before you trash; the republicans had their chance and failed miserably. Now it is Obama's turn.
He's had less than a month and he's already made mistakes. My only beef is that people are treating him (and he's seeing himself) as Abraham Lincoln or something. He just started. He's no hero. He hasn't had a chance to go down in flames NOR earn an approval rating at all.
I agree, something needs to be done, but this bill is way off base. Politicians couldn't have had an opportunity to read the whole damn thing before they signed it.
So offer an alternative. You republicans love to point fingers and Blame but I don't see your new leader Rush or his side kick Hannity offering a substantial plan. Even some republicans hope this thing passes. Read on:
Specter blurts out the truth:
"When I came back to the cloak room after coming to the agreement a week ago today, one of my colleagues said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' My Republican colleague said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' I said, 'Are you going to vote with me?' And he said, 'No, I might have a primary.' And I said, 'Well, you know very well I'm going to have a primary.' ... I think there are a lot of people in the Republican caucus who are glad to see this action taken without their fingerprints, without their participation."
Like I said in a previous post on another thread, this stimulus isn't about politics; rather, it is about engineering. Republicans and democrats are about politics - BOTH side of the isle.
You pick at a handful of silly items and offer nothing but criticism. Show us the way...
One of the interesting ironies about the economic stimulus bill that just passed is that by most any measure it is the largest tax cut in US history. It includes $282 billion in tax cuts over two years. In comparison, Bush’s largest tax cuts (in 2004/2005) totaled $231 billion.
So why did the Republicans just vote overwhelmingly against the largest tax cut in history? Obama’s tax cuts are aimed mostly at the middle class, families and people who work. While Bush’s tax cuts primarily benefited the rich.
By the way, if it's politics as usual in Washington you should be very happy since that would mean it is republican politics.
I've learned for two years now not to under-estimate Obama. I watched from the very start of the campaign how he strategized a path to achieving his goals partly by eschewing the kinds of tactics that Washington has come to see as political skill. I think of him in some ways as the Un-Rove. Karl Rove mastered the art of petty and nasty political tactics in the South of the post-Reagan era. And he never had a solid grip on conservatism as a political philosophy or of political strategy. And so Rove today endures as the architect of the biggest and deepest political implosion since the Democrats in the 1970s. It was all tactics, no strategy; all politics, no governance. He remains the worst single political strategist of modern times.
Now look at how Obama has framed the debate since the election. Every single symbolic act has been inclusive and sober. From that speech in Grant Park to the eschewal of euphoria on Inauguration Day; from the George Will dinner invite to the Rick Warren invocation; from meeting the House Republicans on the Hill to convening a fiscal responsibility summit; from telegraphing to all of us Obamacons that he wasn't a fiscal lunatic to ... unveiling the most expansive, liberal, big government reversal of Reagan any traditional Democrat would die for.
Smart, isn't he? He won the stimulus debate long before the Republicans realized it (they were busy doing tap-dances of victory on talk radio, while he was building a new coalition without them). And now, after presenting such a centrist, bi-partisan, moderate and personally trustworthy front, he gets to unveil a radical long-term agenda that really will soak the very rich and invest in the poor. Given the crisis, he has seized this moment for more radicalism than might have seemed possible only a couple of months ago.
The risk is, at least, a transparent risk. If none of this works, he will have taken a massive gamble and failed. The country will be bankrupt and he will have one term. His gamble with the economy may come to seem like Bush's gamble in Iraq. But if any of it works, if the economy recovers, and if the GOP continues to be utterly deaf and blind to the new landscape we live in, then we're talking less Reagan than FDR in long-term impact.
It's going to be a riveting first year, isn't it?
Dig deep and you'll find there is much more behind stimulus items than mere pork. It's easy to be ctritical but do your due dilligence and dig under the sheets for the real story before you are so quick to say none of this will create jobs. This will save and protect jobs right here in Michigan.
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The next anti-pork rallying cry for the GOP is coming in the form of small, purple fruit.
On Friday, Minority Leader John Boehner attacked the omnibus spending bill currently heading through Congress by honing in one particularly odd-sounding earmark: federal money for "blueberry research."
"They had money in this bill for blueberry research, a nature center, a whole bunch of other beautification projects," said the Ohio Republican, but "they couldn't find money to continue the D.C. scholarship program."
Absurdity was the effect that Boehner was hoping for, and the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference ate it up (not literally). But there was, as usual, another side to story: without the money, experts say, the blueberry industry could fall by the wayside; hundreds if not thousands of jobs could be at risk, and the U.S. government could deny itself serious advancements in medicine and cancer research.
Overall, the total cost of blueberry expenditure (in the form of four separate earmarks) in the omnibus -- roughly $940,000 -- is a drop in the bucket when looking at the total cost -- $410 billion -- of the entire package. And some of the co-sponsors of those earmarks include members of Boehner's own party: Sens. Saxby Chambliss, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Reps. Jack Kingston and Frank LoBiondo.
Indeed, lawmakers in states like New Jersey, Michigan, Maine and Georgia, insist that blueberries and cranberries are major economic engines in their states, impacting hundreds if not thousands of jobs.
"Maine is the number one producer of wild blueberries in the world," said Rep. Mike Michaud, D-ME. "In fact, the total economic impact on our state is $250 million per year, and the industry supports 2,540 jobs -- many of which are in the most economically challenged areas of our state."
Moreover, much of the money, as Michaud notes, is aimed at minimizing reliance on pesticides and integrating crop management programs, both of which can mean healthier food. The same holds true in other states.
"What we are trying to do is breed blueberries that have a resistance to diseases," said Dr. Nick Vorsa, of the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. "This funding is actually critical to keep that research growing."
But the loftiest benefits of investing in blueberry research are the far-reaching medical benefits that it can help uncover. Some of the research will be geared towards advancing and understanding the ways in which antioxidants are beneficial in the prevention of cancer and heart disease. Asked if he thought the additional funding for his lab -- however minimal -- could help uncover measures to more effectively combat ovarian cancer, Vorsa's replied "absolutely."
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