No Cover

With no Republican support, the House approved an $819 billion stimulus plan that will serve as the cornerstone of President Obama's efforts to resuscitate the economy…

The measure passed 244 to 188, with 11 Democrats and 177 Republicans voting against it.-- Paul Kane and Michael Shear, Washington Post

No Republican cover! With not a moment to spareand playing on Omerica’s fears unconstitutional usurper Opresident Barack Obama and House Democrats offered up their answers to the global economic and credit crisis which was caused by Democrat economic policies but this time they did it without the benefit of hiding behind President Bush and Republicans.

This is now officially Barack Obama’s economy and it will be no longer acceptable to blame Bush or the Republicans. To which I say, it is about time Democrats took responsibility for something that they created through Liberal legislation. (see story)

Could this be the change that Obama has promised? Let’s take a look. There are 647 text pages in the Democrat crafted stimulus bill and nobody Democrat or otherwise has studied it or the impact that this bill will have on our economy. Yet the Democrats have hastily pushed this bill through and passed it on a straight partisan line vote.

With regard to some of the sections in the bill the base print in the energy title has a provision that if our efforts to conserve energy bear fruit and we actually use less electricity we give the governor of the state the authority to approve the right of the utilities providing the electricity to raise their rates to off set the revenue lost because of the conservation gains.

In other words the bill before us has a Federal guarantee of revenue to the generating companies that are providing electricity of America. – U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (see video start at 2:13mins)

"He [Bush] betrayed this country! He played on our fears. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place."—Al Gore

“Obama and Democrats betrayed this country! They played on our economic fears. They’re taking America on an ill-conceived domestic adventure ($819 billion dollar stimulus bill) that is dangerous to the tax paying American, an adventure preordained and ill-planned after the international banking and credit crisis that Barney Frank, Christopher Dodd, Nancy Pelosi and a Democrat controlled Congress created.” –Alaphiah

Democrat unconstitutional usurper Opresident Barack Obama again used the fear of crisis to prod his fellow Democrats into doing something even if that something is the wrong something.

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before."-- White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel

This $819 Billion dollar Democrat appropriations like bill is the equivalent of the decision to invade Iraq in the damage that it will do to our economy. The bill is likely to reach $900 billion that is larger than the combined total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that is because of the inappropriate and unnecessary spending hidden in this bill. Calling this situation an economic crisis Obama hopes to turn the America people against anyone who opposes him.

This is supposed to be a new era of bipartisanship, but this bill was written based on the wish list of every living -- or dead -- Democratic interest group. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it, "We won the election. We wrote the bill."—WSJ

And wrote this bill they did! This bill is supposed to create jobs but according to the Wall Street Journal the following is the pork that Democrats packed into this bill.

$1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn't turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There's even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.

Some $30 billion, or less than 5% of the spending in the bill, is for fixing bridges or other highway projects. There's another $40 billion for broadband and electric grid development, airports and clean water projects that are arguably worthwhile priorities.

Add the roughly $20 billion for business tax cuts, and by our estimate only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus. And even many of these projects aren't likely to help the economy immediately.

Most of the rest of this project spending will go to such things as renewable energy funding ($8 billion) or mass transit ($6 billion) that have a low or negative return on investment.

Congress wants to spend $600 million more for the federal government to buy new cars. Uncle Sam already spends $3 billion a year on its fleet of 600,000 vehicles. Congress also wants to spend $7 billion for modernizing federal buildings and facilities. The Smithsonian is targeted to receive $150 million; we love the Smithsonian, too, but this is a job creator?

$252 billion is for income-transfer payments -- that is, not investments that arguably help everyone, but cash or benefits to individuals for doing nothing at all. There's $81 billion for Medicaid, $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits, $20 billion for food stamps, and $83 billion for the earned income credit for people who don't pay income tax.

As for the promise of accountability, some $54 billion will go to federal programs that the Office of Management and Budget or the Government Accountability Office have already criticized as "ineffective" or unable to pass basic financial audits. These include the Economic Development Administration, the Small Business Administration, the 10 federal job training programs, education, which would get $66 billion more. That's more than the entire Education Department spent a mere 10 years ago and is on top of the doubling under President Bush. Some $6 billion of this will subsidize university building projects.

If you think the intention here is to help kids learn, the House declares on page 257 that "No recipient . . . shall use such funds to provide financial assistance to students to attend private elementary or secondary schools."

There is no doubt that the media and Democrats will attempt to paint Republicans as wrong for standing up for the American people in the face of Democrat wasteful spending such as funding Democrat wish list projects hidden in a bill that is supposed to stimulate the economy by saving and creating jobs.

But Americans are tired of Democrat finger pointing. Democrats control the government and Democrats are in charge of the economy and they have passed a historic spending bill that will cost Americans more than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined the results will be very little job creation. This bill is an absolute failure!

No one to blame in this fiasco but a Democrat!