What Happened To The Stimulus Money?
Jun 13, 2010 Political
And why are teacher’s, firefighter’s and police officer’s salaries a federal concern?
The stimulus bill signed into law last February was a 787 billion dollar boondoggle. The total package, with interest on borrowed money, will put the thing over 1 TRILLION dollars. The unfortunate thing is that we got very little for our money and the things it was spent on are NOT things that will stimulate the economy and a lot of them are things states are responsible for.
Obama is pleading with Democrats to pass another 50 BILLION dollars of “emergency” funds to prevent teachers, firefighters and police officers from being laid off.
President Obama urged reluctant lawmakers Saturday to quickly approve nearly $50 billion in emergency aid to state and local governments, saying the money is needed to avoid “massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters” and to support the still-fragile economic recovery. Washington Post
The first thing we should realize is that the federal government is not responsible for teachers, firefighters or police officers unless they work for the federal government. The states AND ONLY THE STATES are responsible for the people in these professions who work in the individual states. It is not the responsibility of taxpayers from Maryland to pay for the teachers, firefighters or police officers in Michigan or any other state. Each state is responsible and using federal tax dollars to pay for these things taxes Americans twice for the same thing.
People are taxed by their states to pay for these services and then their federal tax dollars are used to pay for the same services, often because of mismanagement at the state level.
It is up to the states to decide if they can afford to pay for the same level of services or if they will have to be scaled back. The states need to decide whether or not to raise taxes to pay for these things. It is not the responsibility of the federal government and our tax dollars should not be paying it.
This is Obama pushing our tax dollars to the people in the unions. Obama has the support of the teachers and many of the law enforcement and firefighting unions (whether the individual members support him or not) and he wants to ensure he has their votes so he will pay for them with OUR money.
Obama already signed one stimulus into law and that stimulus provided for teachers and for law enforcement.
- $4 billion for state and local law enforcement agencies
- $44.5 billion in aid to local school districts to prevent layoffs and cutbacks, with flexibility to use the funds for school modernization and repair (State Equalization Fund)
Read the Wiki article and see how much money the stimulus funneled to things that will not, in any way shape or form, stimulate the economy. The total education package was over 90 BILLION dollars.
Obama spent 48.5 BILLION dollars for teachers and law enforcement and now he wants 50 BILLION dollars more. If the stimulus worked as sold then these entities would not need additional money, if we were to accept that the federal government should be paying for them at all.
The stimulus is not stimulating and it is a failure. Obama wants more money to throw at his supporters in the unions at the expense of the taxpayers and our national sovereignty. How much more debt will we accrue before we are totally owned by another country?
It is not the job of the federal government to pay for the salaries of people working for the individual states. The states are solely responsible for these salaries and if they cannot afford them then they need to make the same tough decisions that plenty of private companies have made and lay off employees.
Obama is trying to use OUR money to pay off the unions and to pander for their votes. We should not be paying for these things and it is criminal that we paid for them with the first stimulus.
Let us not keep making the same mistakes by continuing to throw good money after bad on an economic folly.
Never surrender, never submit.
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Tags: failure, firefighter, mini stimulus, Obama, payoffs, police, stimulus, teacher, unions, vote buying
Why No Tort Reform?
Oct 31, 2009 Political
Because Tort Lawyers have bought and paid for the Democratic Party
The monstrosity of a health care bill is not good for the country. The Democrats claim it is deficit neutral and that it will save money in the long run but that is a lie. Nothing the government does saves money. Massachusetts has the same kind of plan and that state is rationing care and raising rates.
If the health care takeover was a good idea it would take effect immediately but Obama and his Democrats know that it is not going to perform as claimed and that is why it will not take effect until after the 2012 presidential election. Obama hopes to win a second term and he knows that he cannot win if the bill takes effect immediately because by the next election the flaws will be quite evident and he will be booted out the door.
The claim of the Democrats is that they are trying to save money. Democrats do not save money. For that matter, it is hard to find anyone from either party that is good at saving money. Having said that, there are plenty of plans that can actually save money. The Republicans introduced a number of reform items to do just that and the Democrats voted against them. Then Senator Barack Obama, the guy who says we have to do this NOW, voted against them. If saving money were truly a priority then tort reform, which was part of those plans, would be included. Tort reform would save money and no matter how much it ended up being, it would be saved. But Democrats can’t have tort reform because the tort lawyers own a piece of that party.
The bill that Pelosi introduced demonstrates that very clearly. The bill provides a payoff to the tort lawyers as evidenced by this as reported at Big Government:
Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,” establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages. [emphasis in quote at Big Government]
There will be incentives if states adopt alternatives to liability litigation (like perhaps arbitration) but if a state has enacted the alternatives of limiting attorney’s fees or capping damages then it is not eligible. Those two items constitute tort reform. Limiting attorney’s fees and capping awards are the meat and potatoes of tort reform but if any state uses that then it loses the ability to receive incentives for any alternatives to litigation that it might devise.
This is a way for the government to ensure that states do not take it upon themselves to enact tort reform. This is the payoff to the tort lawyers. Democrats (and they wrote this bill) have ensured they will keep their buddies in tort law in business.
It is nothing more than a payoff and it stinks. The Federal Government is cutting states off at the knees to protect the lawyers by including a provision that discourages them from enacting tort reform, an issue the Democrats do not want addressed. Obama was blowing smoke up our collective rear ends when he said he would look at, and consider, options for tort reform.
This bill weighs 19 pounds and is nearly 2000 pages. This is but one item that pays off supporters and in the next week we will see more information as people read through it.
Writing a bill behind closed doors, without Republican input, and hiding this kind of stuff in it is not my definition of transparent.
How do people not laugh when the ObaMao Reich claims to be the most transparent in history?
Maybe we could have asked Pelosi that when she introduced it if she had not barred everyone except those chosen by her from attending the event. That is another demonstration of this Reich’s transparency.
Wake up America.
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Tags: health care, lawyers, lies, Obama, payoffs, Pelosi, tort reform, transparency