Stimulus Comedy

While Nancy ponders whether to add another stimulus bill on top of the one already being debated some Democrats are actually reading the current POS and coming away less then impressed:

Democrats rejected four GOP amendments to the omnibus spending bill last night, and they will face more today. The additional amendments are the price that Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) was forced to pay Thursday night after he sought to bring an end to debate on the bill and came up one vote short. Several Republicans whose support Reid had anticipated did not deliver, but the most costly defection was that of Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), a member of the Democratic leadership, in protest of a little-noticed Cuba provision that would ease U.S. rules on travel and imports to the communist-led island.

The Menendez rebellion was a jolt of political reality for Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Obama, signaling that the solidarity of the stimulus debate is fading as Democratic lawmakers are starting to read the fine print of the bills they will wrestle with in the coming weeks and months, and not always liking what they see.

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Menendez knew that his hard-line approach to Cuba was a minority view within his party, and that it was at odds with Obama’s approach. But he did not expect to discover a significant policy change embedded in the text on an appropriations bill. His policy aides came across the language when the legislation was posted on a congressional Web site.

“The process by which these changes have been forced upon this body is so deeply offensive to me, and so deeply undemocratic, that it puts the omnibus appropriations package in jeopardy, in spite of all the other tremendously important funding that this bill would provide,” the enraged son of Cuban immigrants said last week on the Senate floor. Menendez even slapped a hold on a pair of Obama nominees to draw attention to the issue.

There’s a report out that the wording of the Cuba provision has been changed to gain Menendez’s support, we shall see.

But why not, it seems the behemoth will likely supply some cash to those who don’t even legally live here:

Tens of thousands of jobs created by the economic stimulus law could end up filled by illegal immigrants, particularly in big states such as California where undocumented workers are heavily represented in construction, experts on both sides of the issue say.

And with the massive voter fraud perpetuated by ACORN and the like this constitutes tens of thousands of additional votes…..and while we’re at it, lets reward the worst school district in the nation with some cash also, no strings attached:

Detroit Public Schools, one of the nation’s most chronically corrupt systems, will receive $355 million from the federal stimulus package — with no strings attached, the Detroit Free Press reported Saturday.

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Ranked in a recent Brookings Institution survey as America’s worst major urban school district, DPS only graduates 24 percent of its students. In December, the DPS board fired Superintendent Connie Calloway for incompetence. Calloway was the second super fired in three years and the eighth district administrator in 20.

DPS has been plagued by corruption. A 2001 audit found $600,000 missing or misspent. Another 2004 audit of the district’s central warehouse found budget over-expenditures of $1.9 million and that furniture bought as part of a $158,000 purchase order was missing.

U.S. taxpayers can likely kiss this stimulus money goodbye.

Nice huh?

One of the best short, concise, analysis of this bill and Obama’s policy comes from Bob Utterback who writes for various farming papers: (h/t Intellectual Conservative)

My concern continues to grow that current policy objectives are focused on taking away from one sector of the economy and giving to another. What incentive does this give for the individual businessperson to take a risk? I would argue that most take a risk only with the objective of making profit. The greater the uncertainty, as we are experiencing now, the greater the profit has to be. It’s not the objective of businesspeople to create jobs for jobs’ sake.

I know this sounds cruel, but businesses exist for the sake of the stockholder, not for the worker. I think this assumption is going to be attacked both domestically and internationally throughout the coming years because the political base is weighted to the worker, rather than the job creator (the businessperson). If the current administration’s stated objective is to increase taxes for those who make money, why take the risk of making money?

Also as a result of the current financial meltdown, I believe we’re going to see an increase in the amount of regulation and red tape that businesses have to deal with when hiring and maintaining employees.

In the end, the economic engine that drives our economy, the small businessperson, is going to simply decide to coast and hold onto what he or she has, rather than take any risks.

That’s it in a nutshell for the next four years folks.

Sad but true.

Curt

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