Yesterday, the Senate voted 72-28 to approve the conference report for the fiscal year 2010 Interior-Environment appropriations bill, H.R. 2996, clearing it for the president’s signature. The bill provides $32.3 billion for the Interior Department, the EPA, and related agencies. It includes another continuing resolution to fund the government through December 18th, since Democrats have still not passed all of the appropriations bills for the new fiscal year.
Pelosi Health Care: Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released her 1,990 page proposed health care bill while barring any Republicans from attending the announcement. The Washington Times reports that "House Democrats blocked the public from attending the unveiling ceremony of their health care bill Thursday morning, allowing only pre-approved visitors whose names appeared on lists to enter the event at the West Front of the Capitol.The audience at the crowded press conference included Hill staffers, union workers, health care providers and students, said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who thanked them for attending."
House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence appeared on Fox News, MSNBC and CNN today to discuss the Democrats' health care bill where he calls Pelosi's health care bill a “Freight Train of Mandates, Taxes and Bureaucracy” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell commented, “This latest bill is the strongest evidence yet that Democrats in Washington are blowing past the American people and pushing ahead with a 1,990-page, trillion experiment that raises health insurance premiums, raises taxes, and slashes Medicare. Americans want common-sense reforms that lower costs and increase access. Instead, Congress has come up with yet another proposal to put more government between Americans and their doctors while spending trillions more with money we don’t have. That’s not reform.”
For those interested, Congressional Budget office (CBO) has completed a preliminary analysis of H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, and and as expected "The estimate includes a projected net cost of $894 billion over 10 years for the proposed expansions in insurance coverage. That net cost itself reflects a gross total of $1,055 billion in subsidies.
Job Losses: Politico reports today, “White House officials, under pressure from the economy's continuing job losses, plan to announce Friday that President Barack Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan ‘has created and saved at least 1 million jobs’ since he signed it in February.” But yesterday, a report by the AP found, “An early progress report on president Barack Obama's economic recovery plan overstates by thousands the number of jobs created or saved through the stimulus program.” And CBS News’ Chip Reid observed last night that “[c]ritics 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.”
Today’s AP story reiterates, “The AP reviewed a sample of federal contracts, not all 9,000 reported to date, and discovered errors in one in six jobs credited to the $787 billion stimulus program — or 5,000 of the 30,000 jobs claimed so far.” Among the overstatements, the AP notes, “Some recipients of stimulus money used the cash to give existing employees pay raises, but each reported saving dozens of jobs with the money, including one Florida day care that claimed 129 jobs saved.” And “[a] Texas contractor whose business kept 22 employees to handle stimulus contracts saw its job count inflated to 88 because the same workers were counted four times.”
In addition, there have been numerous reports across the country of inflated or mistaken claims of job creation from stimulus money. According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, “One contractor reported creating 4.7 million jobs, which is an ‘obvious error’ . . . .” In Virginia, the administration reported creating or saving 50 jobs in Danville, but a local manager said no jobs were actually on the chopping block. In Colorado, the administration reported creating 4,695 jobs, but The Denver Post pointed out that “the state has now downgraded that to about 830 full-time jobs created or saved.” The Arizona Republic found that 12 employees working on 3 contracts in Arizona were counted as 30 jobs.
It’s little wonder, then, that Craig Jennings, a federal fiscal policy analyst at OMB Watch told CBS News, “We have, I think, a rough estimate, at best. And at worst, these numbers are next to useless.” Thus, claims from the White House today that they’ve “saved or created” one million jobs would best be treated with a healthy skepticism, given the other administration claims about the stimulus that have failed to pan out.
Tags: government healthcare, Harry Reid, medicare, Nancy Pelosi, Obama administration, stimulus, US Congress, 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!
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