Today in Washington D. C. - Nov 12, 2009 - Post-American Democrats Don't Care What the People Want

Congress is in recess until Monday. Many of us are feeling these days: can they just stay home even longer? The Senate will then resume consideration of H.R. 3082, the fiscal year 2010 Military Construction-Veterans Affairs (Milcon-VA) appropriations bill, and begin working on amendments.

This past Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed cloture on the nomination of David Hamilton to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. A vote is currently scheduled for next week. Also, Reid began the Rule 14 process on the House health care bill, which allows it to be brought to the Senate calendar, although it does not mean the Senate will take up the bill yet. A bill Reid has put together is still being scored by CBO.

Politico reports today, “Under pressure from a double-digit unemployment rate, President Barack Obama announced Thursday that he will hold a jobs summit at the White House in December.” The announcement comes less than a week after the unemployment rate hit 10.2%. The timing recalls other press events held by the White House in the face of unpleasant news. For instance, a week after signing the $787 billion stimulus bill, Obama decided to host a “fiscal responsibility summit.”

Of course, this is all while the administration continues to come under fire for the problems with its first attempt to address unemployment. The Boston Globe reported yesterday, “While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that has not yet started.” Sounds like many of the people counting these days are prevaricators. This comes on the heels of a story from The Denver Post on Tuesday which reported that numbers in Colorado were “inflated by at least 1,000 jobs” and similar stories across the country.

The editors at the San Diego Union-Tribune are not amused and wrote in a scathing editorial yesterday: “The errors were not of a minor or technical nature. They were egregious. . . . It’s not government as usual. Instead, it appears to reflect a decision to distort government data collection to support explicitly political agendas. With U.S. unemployment now topping 10 percent, the Obama administration is struggling more than ever to fashion credible counterarguments to the assertion made by this editorial page and many pundits and economists that the massive stimulus measure was a poorly thought-out pork fest that wouldn’t work. What’s the easiest way to defend the stimulus? Make up claims about its glorious results.”

At the same time as the administration is looking for new ways to address the ailing economy, its allies in Congress seem to be pushing plans that will only serve to weaken it. According to the AP, “Majority Leader Harry Reid is considering a plan for higher payroll taxes on the upper-income earners to help finance health care legislation he intends to introduce in the Senate in the next several days, numerous Democratic officials said Wednesday. These officials said one of the options Reid has had under review would raise the payroll tax that goes to Medicare, but only on income above $250,000 a year. Current law sets the tax at 1.45 percent of income, an amount matched by employers.” And The Wall Street Journal editors note, “House Democrats are funding their new entitlement with a 5.4% surtax on incomes above $500,000 for individuals and above $1 million for joint filers. The surcharge is intended to snag the greatest number of taxpayers to raise some $460.5 billion, and so the House has written it to apply to modified adjusted gross income. That means it includes both capital gains and dividends.”

With respect to the prior non-committed of Stimulus money and recent actions, we could speculate that the Obama Administration will use these funds to "buy votes" from Congressmen on bills supporting their agenda, or they will release funds by the end of second quarter of 2010 in the districts of Democrat incumbents to bolster their re-election efforts. In truth, if President Obama were looking for ways to address unemployment, he could ask Democrats in Congress to back off the job-killing aspects of the massive health care bills, especially the hundreds of billions in tax hikes. Instead, the White House appears to be more interested in holding events for the press and attempting to justify the wasteful stimulus bill as more Americans lose their jobs. Folks, "Post-American" Democrats don't care what the majority of the American people want. They intend to finance their agenda with More Debt to be paid by your children and grandchildren.

---

Tags: government healthcare, unemployment, 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!