Today in Washington D. C. - Jan 21, 2009

The Senate reconvened at noon today and proceeded to executive session to consider the nomination of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) to be Secretary of State. Three hours of debate are scheduled, with a vote expected at 4:30 PM. Following the vote, the Senate will resume consideration of the Ledbetter bill (S. 181) .

Yesterday the Senate confirmed by voice vote the nominations of Steven Chu as Energy secretary, Gov. Janet Napolitano (D-AZ) as Homeland Security secretary, former Congressional Budget Office director Peter Orzag as director of the Office of Management and Budget, Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO) as Interior secretary, retired Gen. Eric Shinseki as Secretary of Veterans Affairs, and former Gov. Tom Vilsack (D-IA) as Secretary of Agriculture.

From Senate & News Sources: With the new president sworn in, attention is turning to the stimulus legislation being pushed by his congressional allies to address the nation’s economic downturn. House Democrats recently unveiled a massive $825 billion spending bill, which was supposedly designed to pump money into the economy. However, a report from the Congressional Budget Office this week reveals that “[l]ess than half the money dedicated to highways, school construction and other infrastructure projects . . . is likely to be spent within the next two years, . . . meaning most of the spending would come too late to lift the nation out of recession,” according to The Washington Post.

Further, The AP reports, “Overall, only $26 billion out of $274 billion in infrastructure spending would be delivered into the economy by the Sept. 30 end of the budget year, just 7 percent. Just one in seven dollars of a huge $18.5 billion investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy programs would be spent within a year and a half.”

Wall Street also appeared to be skeptical of the stimulus plan. Alan Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics of Boston, told The Boston Globe, “The message from Wall Street is ‘Show me.’ Stimulus heavily oriented towards government spending has a checkered history.”

Last year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that economic stimulus spending should be “timely, temporary, and targeted.” If the CBO report is accurate, it looks like the proposal being put forward by Democrats is anything but timely. If it includes money for dubious projects Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has criticized as “mob museums and waterslides,” it would be hard to consider it targeted. It appears that Democrats need to spend a little more time considering something that would actually have a stimulative effect on the economy.

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