Today in Washington D. C. - Feb 9, 2009

The Senate reconvened at 1 PM today and resume consideration of the economic stimulus legislation (H.R. 1). At 5:30, the Senate will vote on cloture on the Nelson-Collins compromise amendment, S. Amend. 570. If cloture is invoked, at noon tomorrow, senators are expected to vote on waiving Paygo requirements on the stimulus, followed by a vote on final passage.

The new bill is touted as featuring cuts from the version senators considered last week. But the new agreement spends $827 billion, and the bill that came from the House cost $819 billion. And the major problem of the bill, that it is neither timely, nor temporary, nor targeted, remains.

In fact, The Washington Post writes today, “The Obama administration’s economic stimulus plan could end up wasting billions of dollars by attempting to spend money faster than an overburdened government acquisition system can manage and oversee it, according to documents and interviews with contracting specialists.” The Post notes, “A CBO analysis last month concluded that federal agencies and states ‘would find it difficult to properly manage and oversee a rapid expansion of existing programs.’”

Something that is getting overlooked in this debate, though, is that this bill is just the beginning of massive government spending being considered this year. As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday, “We’ve got a $1 trillion deficit. Our national debt exceeds $10 trillion. Soon we’ll vote on an Omnibus Appropriations bill that will cost another $400 billion, bringing the total to $1 trillion for appropriations this year alone—a new record. The President is talking about another round of bank bailouts that could cost as much as four trillion dollars. And when you include interest, the bill before us will cost nearly $1.3 trillion.”

It seems that Democrats may finally be realizing that all this spending adds up and are concerned that putting too much on the table now might make Americans a little more skeptical of their stimulus bill. To that end, Bloomberg reports that an announcement by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner about a proposal to buy up bad debt was put off from today until tomorrow. According to Bloomberg, “Officials said yesterday the one-day delay was to allow the administration to focus on getting Senate approval of President Barack Obama’s fiscal stimulus.” Meanwhile, CQ reported last week that House Democrats decided to hold off on moving a $410 billion omnibus appropriations package. Are Democrats hoping Americans will ignore the forest to focus while they talk about the trees?

While the President's approval rating remains high and neither he nor his staff wrote this bill; they are however pushing for its passage at lightening speed. However, it is a Democrat Congress, with a very low approval rating, who wrote the stimulus bill and just could not help themselves from loading it with pork and wasteful spending. Consider this, if we had started spending $1 million a day at the birth of Christ, we would still would not have spent as much as is being proposed in the stimulus bill. And then if we add the upcoming addition of the omnibus bill and the cost associated with the proposed actions of the new Treasury Secretary's to buy up all the remaining toxic GSE loans thus adding them to the US Debt, we are looking at placing future generations in debt to the year 6000.

The Senate version is about $827 BILLION which is $8 Billion larger than the proposed House version even with the removal of some of House Speakers favorite items. But the proposed bill has lots of tax credits to low income people who don't even pay taxes! Bloomberg is estimating the real costs for all the programs including interest will be at $9.7 TRILLION. Can any of us fathom the Government spending $332 MILLION per minute! So far the bailout and government spending to the end of this March alone will exceed the total cost of the entire Iraq and Afghanistan wars/military actions combined.

---

Tags: economic stimulus, National Debt, US Congress, US Debt, US House, US Senate, Washington D.C. To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!