Obama's cap & trade policy--est. $2000 more per year per household in electric costs!

[Newby]

I've defending the need for stimulus spending in the economic situation. I've never commented on particular aspects of the stimulus bill and defended the specified spending items and tax cuts.

Glad you're enjoying yourself. I find you amusing as well, though this thread is starting to get old.

I posted this for you on another thread. And as I said there, I'm sure that Fox News isn't a 'legitimate' souce in your estimation, so just continue to completely disregard what the rest of the intellectually honest people are talking about, and it appears that the topic now bores you as well.

First 100 Days: Obama's Federal Spending Spree Raises Management Concerns

President Obama's spending spree in his first 100 days in office has initiated the largest expansion of federal government since World War II and set up a massive challenge for his administration.

By Stephen Clark

Thursday, April 23, 2009

In the early months of his presidency, President Obama has shown he isn't afraid to spend billions of dollars on corporate bailouts or to run up trillions of dollars in U.S. debt to battle an economic crisis.

But in doing so, he has initiated the largest expansion of federal government since World War II and set up a massive challenge for his administration -- one that officials are already warning will be fraught with peril.

During the first 100 days of his presidency, Obama has signed a $787 billion stimulus bill into law, proposed an eye-popping $3.6 trillion budget for the next fiscal year, taken over a massive $700 billion Wall Street bailout program and created other billion-dollar programs to help grease the economic wheels.

Analysts call the spending spree "unprecedented" when the nation is not in a declared war, and they say the challenges that accompany it are a logical result.

"You take any organization in the world and you double its size in 90 days, it's going to have a hard time managing that transition," said William Gale, vice president and director of the economic studies program at Brookings Institute.

"The sheer management issues that come up are very important," Gale said, "because I can imagine the people running those projects that are about to be doubled may not want to see their face on '60 Minutes' as the poster child for government waste and useless spending."

Among the warning signs: The Government Accountability Office said Thursday that states need help covering the cost of overseeing their share of the massive federal stimulus program.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a congressionally appointed oversight panel this week that America's banks are still broken, despite all their bailout billions.

And an inspector general assigned to the bailout program concluded this week that a private-public partnership designed to buy up bad assets is tilted in favor of private investors and creates "potential unfairness to the taxpayer."

Brian Reidl, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, said all the spending may lead a Democratic-controlled Congress to "overreach and create expensive, unworkable new programs that will not be easy to fix or cut later."

"There are significant economic risks to rapidly expanding the size of government," Reidl said. "Countries with large governments produce less wealth and create fewer jobs than countries with minimal government."

The number of programs and the dizzying array of acronyms describing them are enough to leave a Scrabble champion exhausted.

There's TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), TALF (Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility) and PPIP(Public-Private Investment Program).

On top of that, Obama's budget proposal includes $770 billion in tax cuts over 10 years for the middle class, $150 billion for funding "green" energy sources and $634 billion toward the introduction of universal health care.

Reidl forsees legislative hurdles.

"Congress has a lot on its plate this year," he told FOXNews.com. "It will be hard for Congress to write useful legislation on energy, health and education while passing all the regular spending."

He said Obama is doing too much too fast.

"It's extremely difficult to craft intelligent legislation in so many areas at one time, especially in a president's first year, when he is facing the same learning curve that any president would face," he said.

But Gale said he believes the White House has done an "enormous" amount right in the first 100 days.

"The flip side of the very aggressive posture the administration has taken is if the economy goes through the floor, we're going to see budget deficits like you've never seen," he said.

Even if the administration is able to get all the programs up and running, Gale said, an exit strategy is lacking to extricate the federal government from the credit markets and all of the state and local government spending.

"I'm not confident that Congress or the administration will have the political discipline to keep these things temporary," he said.

"It kind of reminds me of Iraq," he said. "We're here. Now what?"

Thank you. It's always interesting to hear the Murdoch perspective. Is there a point to this?

Just as I thought, let your partisanship shine thru. You can't even read something that might oppose your views because you're so afraid of being wrong. Pitiful.

Do you seriously think that everything that Fox News reports is invalid? If so, I really do feel sorry for you.

 

[Iriemon]

I posted this for you on another thread. And as I said there, I'm sure that Fox News isn't a 'legitimate' souce in your estimation, so just continue to completely disregard what the rest of the intellectually honest people are talking about, and it appears that the topic now bores you as well.

Thank you. It's always interesting to hear the Murdoch perspective. Is there a point to this?

Just as I thought, let your partisanship shine thru. You can't even read something that might oppose your views because you're so afraid of being wrong. Pitiful.

Do you seriously think that everything that Fox News reports is invalid? If so, I really do feel sorry for you.

I read it. I'll repeat, is there some point to it? What is your point? Or are you just ranting because you've got your nose out of joint?

 

[driveby]

What is the source of the definition you are using?

I'm not trying to be obstreperous, but it is a definitional thing. If any money directed to a specific problem is an "earmark" then defense spending, SS, medicare, etc etc are all earmarks because they are all money directed to specific things. It can't mean something that broad.

No one disputes that the $4000 omnibus bill had thousands of earmarks. But the Obama adminsitration asserted the stimulus bill did not have earmarks, and article that say it really did like the ones cited earlier say things like "while it technically didn't have earmarks" there was pork in it.

When someone initially said there were earmarks in the stimulus bill, I asked for a cite b/c I had recalled differently.

After 4 persons interjected their opinions and finally someone cited something, the article talked about it being how you defined earmarks.

As I understand if, an earmark is technically where there is spending in a bill that is specifically identified to be spent as directed by a certain congress person in a certain place for a certain thing, ie it is earmarked for that particular appropriation.

The stimulus bill does not allocate the money to be spent by congress, and therefore is not an earmark in the sense these things are traditionally done.

Technicall definitions? I agree. That is why after reading the cited material I wrote that I agreed that if you use a broader interpretation of "earmark" then there were earmarks in the bill.

And a blow job is not sexual relations, blah blah blah ........

And waterboarding is not torture blah blah blah ........

Lots of things come down to definitions.

Another idiotic comparison, you boneheads think giving 2 pancakes for breakfast instead of 3 is torture....

 

[oreo]

Who is this rant directed to, me?

I don't have endless devotion to Obama. Clinton was my first choice in the election. I've critcized Obama on a few things.

I do however defend the truth against blatantly false statements by partisan hacks, such as: "Why did Obama promise to have no earmarks during his campaign?" when he promised no such thing.

Defending the truth is not blind admiration, except I suppose to a partisan hack.

During the presidential campaign, earmark reform was a major theme for John McCain, who often highlighted projects of other candidates that he considered wasteful. During the first presidential debate on Sept. 26, 2008, Barack Obama said he had stopped requesting earmarks as a senator and that he shared McCain's desire for earmark reform and the elimination of wasteful projects.

McCain noted that Obama had made $932 million in earmark requests during his first three years as a senator and he criticized Obama for saying earmarks accounted for "only $18 billion" in federal spending.

Obama replied, "John, nobody is denying that $18 billion is important. And, absolutely, we need earmark reform . And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely."

Sure sounds like it should be 'none' to me.

Obama agreeing we need earmark reform is the same as promising he'd have none of them to you, eh?

Like I said. Folks can decide for themselves who the partisan hack is.

Obama did state he would go line by line in the budget & "scrub" the budget clean of wasteful spending. Instead of doing that he has given us a 3.9 TRILLION dollar budget, that even his own CBO has stated is unsustainable. This bill has already passed the house.

For a 20 year old getting out of college & heading into the work force in a couple of years, they will be paying approximately $114,000.00 in INTEREST alone on this bill. A 40 year old will be paying $138,000.00 in INTEREST alone on this bill. These numbers are fact, not fiction, you can look them up yourself--Si Modo has a chart on this board regarding these numbers.

Obama also told the American public on 3 different occasions , including during his televised news conference regarding the stimulus bill, that there were no earmarks in the 787 BILLION dollar economic stimulus bill. That was not true--it was loaded with earmarks. Just one example: (640 MILLION dollars so Harry Reid could get his train from Las Vegas to Disneyland--& many more such as this.) He rushed this bill through the house & senate so fast, that not even they read it. In it were the AIG retention bonuses of 68 million, another 200+ million in bonuses for Fannie/Freddie executives, 20 BILLION dollars for Acorn, 98 Million for Hollywood to buy film with, 75 Million for smoking cessation, & many many more. There was a reason Obama wanted this bill rushed through--he wanted it passed before the American public got a look at it. "So much for his promise of "transperancy in government."

So you can chose to keep the blinders on & be mezmerised by all the fancy speeches.

Obama has in fact, broken several promises within his first 100 days.

 

[Maple]

Some estimates run as high as $4,000 per year and the po people are gonna have to pay it too. This ain't gonna be like taxes, if you don't make enough you don't have to pay, everyone even the po people gonna pay for this made up monster.

IT HAS NOT BEEN PROVEN THAT PEOPLE ARE THE CAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING, many weather scientists state that it is a natural occurence that has happened over thousands of years. Theres the fraud.

 

[Iriemon]

During the presidential campaign, earmark reform was a major theme for John McCain, who often highlighted projects of other candidates that he considered wasteful. During the first presidential debate on Sept. 26, 2008, Barack Obama said he had stopped requesting earmarks as a senator and that he shared McCain's desire for earmark reform and the elimination of wasteful projects.

McCain noted that Obama had made $932 million in earmark requests during his first three years as a senator and he criticized Obama for saying earmarks accounted for "only $18 billion" in federal spending.

Obama replied, "John, nobody is denying that $18 billion is important. And, absolutely, we need earmark reform . And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely."

Sure sounds like it should be 'none' to me.

Obama agreeing we need earmark reform is the same as promising he'd have none of them to you, eh?

Like I said. Folks can decide for themselves who the partisan hack is.

Obama did state he would go line by line in the budget & "scrub" the budget clean of wasteful spending.

Do you have a cite to a quote to where he said this?

How is that the same as the claim he promised there would be no earmarks?

 

[garyd]

Obama: No earmarks for 2009 - CNN.com

HOefully CN' word is good enough for you doubting one. The story references Obama's no Ear marks pledge, There is also a later one by CNN recanting it. Google Obama on Ear mrks.