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As of 11-6-09 The signed stimulus contracts for non-government business is at $32,511,586,374.70 (Billion). One third of this amount is for pharmaceuticals preparation manufacturers $11,285,033,973.18 (Billion) Base and All Options Value From the TAS Recovery chart on the site link.

Dear Elected Representative Washington, D.C. Re: CAN YOU HEAR US NOW? You ignored our tee parties, you ignored the 1.7 Million marching on Washington DC on September 12, and you ignored our letters, phone calls and emails. Yesterday despite everything that POTUS and the Democratic Party could do, including pouring 3 times the amount of money into the New Jersey race than the Republican challenger, the electorate said “NO”. “ENOUGH” “STOP THE MADNESS”. C A N Y O U H E A R U S N O W? We are retired with a pension. That means we can dedicate 100%...

Interactive map and links to earmark spending by state.

Stimulated School Systems Malcolm A. Kline, November 3, 2009 Americans driving, or walking, through blocks of shut-down businesses and foreclosed-upon homes while greeting their unemployed neighbors or perhaps looking for jobs themselves may wonder what happened to the so-called stimulus money that Congress voted to spend earlier this year. On Monday, the federal government provided part of the answer to that question. “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) provided approximately $100 billion to the U.S. Department of Education (ED) with the initial goal of delivering emergency education funding to states,” the ED department reported on November 2,...

Representative Boehner, In regards to the Republican Party's intention to offer an alternative health care bill, I can only respectfully say, "What in the world are you thinking!?" I am simply flabbergasted that in response to the shift to conservative principles occurring in this country and the rejection of huge government spending programs, your response is to offer... a huge government spending program!? Not only does this violate every principle of conservatism, but it also takes away the chief weapon our party will be able to employ in 2010, which is the Democrat Party’s propensity to spend this country into...

WASHINGTON – Those tax-free spending accounts that you and your co-workers use to help pay for dental work, insurance copayments or over-the-counter drugs face a hit under the health overhaul bills in Congress — unless a coalition that includes a powerful union, insurers and others can stop it.

Recent disclosure that the so-called “cash for clunkers” government program that paid new car buyers up to $4500 each for the trade-in of qualifying vehicles actually cost taxpayers an average of over $24,000 per trade-in due to government “red tape,” prompted a scathing response on the whitehouse.gov web site. “Quibbling over the cost to taxpayers is both untimely and unseemly,” wrote an anonymous White House staffer. “The important objective is to pump money into the economy. It wouldn’t have mattered if we simply threw currency from the windows of a moving car. In this case, the government employees who processed...

RUNNING for a second term, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine insists he's "fighting for what matters most." But for whom? Corzine's record plainly shows that the New Jersey taxpayer is among the least of his concerns. His decisions have yielded a toxic business climate, out-migration of entrepreneurs and a tax system that's falling apart. A second term would be disastrous. Perhaps Corzine's most fundamental error is to consistently try to fix public-policy problems by throwing more money at them -- funding the government largesse with tax hikes on individuals and businesses.

From time immemorial proverbial wisdom has taught the virtues of saving, and warned against the consequences of prodigality and waste. This proverbial wisdom has reflected the common ethical as well as the merely prudential judgments of mankind. But there have always been squanderers, and there have apparently always been theorists to rationalize their squandering. The classical economists, refuting the fallacies of their own day, showed that the saving policy that was in the best interests of the individual was also in the best interests of the nation. They showed that the rational saver, in making provision for his future, was...

M. Speaker, The last time our unemployment rate hit 9.8 percent was in 1983. Ronald Reagan responded by cutting taxes and reducing regulatory burdens on the economy, producing the biggest peacetime economic expansion in the nation’s history. Today, President Obama is doing exactly the opposite. Obamacare and Cap and Trade and many other bills promise the biggest tax increases and heaviest regulations our country has ever seen. Over the last 100 years, three presidents responded to recessions by reducing taxes and regulations: Warren Harding, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan – and all produced rapid and dramatic economic recoveries. Two...

The White House disclosed the other day that the fiscal 2009 budget deficit clocked in at $1.4 trillion, amid the usual promises to do something about it. Yet even as budget director Peter Orszag was speaking, House Democrats were moving on a dozen spending bills for fiscal 2010 that total 12.1% in more domestic discretionary increases. Yes, 12.1%. Remember, inflation is running close to zero, or 0.8%. The good news, if we can call it that, is that Senate Democrats only want to increase nondefense appropriations by 8% for 2010. Because these funding increases become part of the permanent baseline...

At a time when we are all very frustrated and angry and feeling like our world is coming apart, we need a little bit of humor to help lighten the load. Grab your mop and join in the fun:)

The reservoir of Democratic support for legislation to stimulate the economy — while adding to the deficit — is drying up. Already faced with what many economists are labeling a jobless recovery, Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill are considering passing more measures to lower the nation’s highest unemployment rate in 26 years. Most of the fixes Democrats are eyeing would add to the budget deficit, which was recently estimated at $1.4 trillion. But fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats and the Democratic freshman class of 2008 are raising objections. Some members of these two factions reluctantly went along with the $787...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The government has spent trillions to rescue the banking system from the brink of disaster, but the biggest cost may be the loss in the government's credibility from an understandably distrustful and angry public, according to a quarterly report released Wednesday by the congressional watchdog over the bank bailout.

Liberals have consistently used deception in their attempt to steer this nation to the far left, but as the old proverb states, sooner or later the truth comes to the light. But who would have thought it would have come from their own mouths? Congressman John Dingell (D-MI) on Cap-and-Trade: "Nobody in this country realizes that cap and trade is a tax, and it's a great big one." Howard Dean on why there's no tort reform in health-care reform proposals:

It's not national security. It's not Charlie Rangel. It's ... the currency. Try as hard as you can, but you're likely to fail unless you get a principal in front of a camera -- and even then -- no one wants to talk about the dollar or its future. That's because no group of citizens of the earth are more twitchy than currency traders -- and how many dominoes can be knocked over by a single twitch is kind of scary. Banks of Central Asia, of China, of Russia, and of Europe can move billions on a sentence from the...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama fought to keep his proposed banking overhaul on track Friday, casting the political struggle ahead as one between big financial interests and average Americans victimized by complex or unscrupulous financial transactions. The president illustrated his call for a consumer finance agency by showcasing five unwitting borrowers and bank customers whose troubles ranged from massive overdraft fees to unwanted interest-only mortgages. "My concern are the millions of Americans who behaved responsibly and yet still found themselves in jeopardy because of the predatory practices of some in the financial industry," Obama said from the East Room of...

WASHINGTON -- Senate leaders on Thursday announced a climactic Finance Committee vote next week on health care legislation, even as Democrats and Republicans kept feuding over its cost and breadth of coverage. Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Finance Committee will vote Tuesday on a 10-year, $829-billion proposal that would expand coverage to 94 percent of eligible Americans-while reducing the federal deficit. A positive cost report on the legislation Wednesday from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office marked a turning point for its main author, Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.

SO the Congressional Budget Office has produced the product that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and President Obama needed: a contorted acknowledgement that -- if taxes are hiked, Medicaid expanded and Medicare reimbursements slashed permanently by 25 percent -- Baucus' $829 billion bill will insure 29 million more people and produce a slight surplus over 10 years. Keep the champagne on ice: The CBO's "preliminary analysis" is a work of fantasy. First off, CBO makes clear that it's not dealing with the actual bill (there isn't one) but a summary. And it assumes Congress will actually make Baucus' unlikely...

The first one $trillion bill didn't create any jobs and the second won't either!Albert Einstein once said "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Clearly Democrats are insane! There is yet another round of talk (here, here, here) in the Capital of a second stimulus bill. Though you might hear them call it something else as it's clear they promised too much and delivered too little with the first one. Obama is suggesting that this second round would “explore additional options to promote job creation.” Yet, what was the first...

Only in the halls of Washington, D.C. and the Obama administration, does the current fiscal policy of unprecedented borrowing and printing of money make sense. To most Americans, it's a difficult to wrap your brain around trillion dollar deficits, but they understand that spending money you don't have will eventually come back to bite you.

One year and a week after Congress enacted legislation creating the $700 billion “Troubled Asset Relief Program,” the Treasury Department next week is expected to launch its first initiative to buy, well, troubled assets. Odd as it may be, in the year since its creation TARP has been used for just about everything but the original purpose of buying troubled, or “toxic,” mortgages and other securities from financial institutions. Now comes word that a long-planned Treasury program to acquire assets will be ready to begin. That’s bad news. Not only is the program flawed, but the emergency that spawned it...

"The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul," George Bernard Shaw once said. For a socialist, Shaw demonstrated good sense with that quotation. Unfortunately, America has become a laboratory in which his hypothesis is being tested

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The National Retail Federation today released its 2009 holiday forecast, projecting holiday retail industry sales to decline one percent this year to $437.6 billion.*

The debate over No Child Left Behind re-authorization is upon us. Except it isn’t. In his recent speech kicking off the discussion, education secretary Arne Duncan asked not whether the central federal education law should be reauthorized, he merely asked how. Let’s step back a bit, and examine why we should end federal intervention in (and spending on) our nation’s schools… in one thousand words or less:

Due to the current economic recession, most Americans are curtailing their spending habits, People continue to be concerned about the current economy and it shows. The nation's personal savings rate recently climbed to a fifteen year high, while outstanding consumer credit has finally declined after many years of increases.

Spending soars to highest in eight years on 'clunkers' Real disposable incomes off 0.2%, marking third monthly decline in a row By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Spurred by government subsidies to buy cars, U.S. consumer spending soared 1.3% in August, the fastest increase since the post-Sept. 11 shopping binge of eight years ago, the Commerce Department estimated Thursday. Spending on durable goods rose 5.3% in August as auto sales surged on the government's "cash-for-clunkers" program. The clunkers program accounted for most of the increase, the government said. The program, intended to get motorists to trade in older vehicles...

Revenue dropped despite a controversial decision by Patrick and the Legislature to increase taxes by more than $1 billion, including boosting the state sales tax from 5 percent to 6.25 percent. Retailers warned that the state would not raise nearly as much as estimated, predicting that customers would go to New Hampshire or the Internet to avoid additional taxes.

In 1932, FDR had an opportunity to change the conventional way that governments deal with a recession. His predecessor, Herbert Hoover, who also had a tendency towards central planning, had started the process. Instead of allowing markets to correct themselves as they had in all the previous panics, as depressions were then called, both men instituted programs of government intervention. Hoover signed the Smoot Hawley tariff even after many of the leading economists of the time personally implored him not to sign it. A tariff would help improve farm prices, which was a cornerstone of the progressive movement. He asked...

The Washington Post reported today that an audit turned up waste in several Green Projects that are run by the Energy Department. While this is unsurprising, this is the same agency that is being tasked with determining where billions of dollars of the Stimulus Bill are going to be spent. Even more troubling is that the initiatives that are being determined as wasteful are the exact types of projects that the funding from the stimulus bill are dedicated towards. As Robert O'Harrow Jr. wrote: "The initiatives are hallmarks of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act approved by Congress...

Every time I write about the need to raise revenues to pay for federal spending, some nitwit always demands to know why we don't just cut spending. That is not a viable option to deal with our fiscal problem. The first point that people need to understand is that we live in a democracy. We don't have a dictator who can just wave his hand and abolish government programs. We have a president who may propose spending cuts, but before they take effect he must get agreement from both the House of Representatives and Senate, both of which may be...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Intelligence activities across the U.S. government and military cost a total of $75 billion a year, the nation's top intelligence official said on Tuesday, disclosing an overall number long shrouded in secrecy. Dennis Blair, the U.S. director of national intelligence, cited the figure as part of a four-year strategic blueprint for the sprawling, 200,000-person intelligence community. In an unclassified version of the blueprint released by Blair's office, intelligence agencies singled out as threats Iran's nuclear program, North Korea's "erratic behavior," and insurgencies fueled by militant groups, though Blair cited gains against al Qaeda. Blair also cited challenges...

The national debt may reach 181% of GDP in 2035 and 716% of GDP in 2080. The latest budget projections show the national debt rising from $5.8 trillion last year to $7.6 trillion this year and $14.3 trillion in 2019. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the debt will rise from 40.8% of the gross domestic product in 2008 to 53.8% in 2009 and 67.8% in 2019. This raises the question of how much debt is too much. At what point are the economic consequences in terms of inflation, higher interest rates, slow growth or a collapsing dollar so...

How did the richest country in the history of the world get into a position where its debt is spiraling out of control? At the end of fiscal 2008, which came on September 30 of last year, the American national debt stood at $9.6 trillion. That sum is, perhaps, quite beyond the imagining of most people. It is, after all, 250 million times the average per capita income. Even the total fortunes of the entire Forbes 400 list add up to less than 15 percent of it. To use a journalistic measure that dates back to the late 18th century—when...

As of this week- Stimulus Spending is at: $20,726,309,285.22 At the link on the upper right will be a listing: *American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Report* Updated as of 9/4/2009. New contracts signed this week are for design and construction of 10 land port of entry buildings for customs and border protection. 6 In North Dakota,1 in Vermont, New Mexico and Montana (The one in Vermont isn't even near the border, in Killingly.)

Dallas, Texas – Finally, there is a centralized location for people to search, decipher, and discuss the myriad ways federal funds are allocated every year, and even control where their tax dollars go, line by line, as they try their hand at balancing the federal budget. Launched Sept. 3, BalanceTheBudget.com is a virtual ‘town hall’ where concerned citizens and groups can share their ideas on balancing the budget, gather for news, review resources and tutorials, blog about budget solutions, and vent fiscal frustrations. Using data provided by the Congressional Budget Office, BalanceTheBudget.com maps out the U.S. budget outlays, budget deficit,...

For decades, Americans have preferred to run up huge deficits by borrowing from foreigners rather than living within their means by collecting enough taxes to cover their government's expenditures. Any attempts to raise taxes are greeted with derision by voters who have no idea how low their taxes are compared with the rest of the world. Like others living outside the United States, I'm very unsympathetic to this whining and deficit-riddled form of governance. It's ruinous for the rest of the world and has been a contributing factor to the economic mess we're all in nowadays. Americans are tax crybabies,...

Just societies spring from virtuous laws and virtuous citizens; they don't arrive by force of presidential charisma or bureaucratic edict. History is rife with examples of centrally planned “social justice” — schemes that germinated in the febrile minds of philosophers dreaming of alabaster cities; places where the enlightened few would lead lesser humanity to tables spread with plenty. Tyrants always promise tables laden with perfectly sliced “pies,” and — from the city walls — views of perfectly leveled playing fields stretching, uninterrupted, to a rose-hued horizon. Only, those promises are never kept. Egalitarian dreamers beget boneyards surrounded by steel-reinforced concrete...

Diamond Principal of Healthcare In the gemological world, the diamond is defined by the four C’s - cut, clarity, color, and caret weight. It is the hardest material known to man. For the sake of argument, let’s change this up a bit and redefine the four C’s as compassion, courage, conviction, and common sense. When applied to the world of healthcare, here also you will find some of the hardest moral decisions known to man. Let’s consider three very old teaching fables: 1) the Lifeboat Theory, 2) the Serenity Prayer, and 3) an Engineer’s Rules of Problem Solving. You will...

Soaring deficits cast a shadow over the dollar Irwin Stelzer: American Account Recommend? (3) $2,000,000,000,000. That’s the amount by which the Obama administration raised its 10-year estimate of the nation’s budget deficit from the $7 trillion it guessed only a few months ago, a 30% error. It seems that expenses are higher than estimated — up 24% this year, the largest increase since the height of the Korean war — and revenues are lower. There’s worse. The new estimate assumes that Medicare and Medicaid (government healthcare) spending will be cut by $622 billion, even though Congress has made it known...

"Based on the $3.25 billion [in federal stimulus money] already allocated," The New York Times reports, "the city estimates that 30,776 jobs will be created by early 2011." That's a little more than $100,000 per job, a bargain compared to Obama administration estimates indicating that the cost per job "saved or created" will be more than twice that high nationwide. It's rather surprising that jobs would be so much cheaper in New York City, where everything else is more expensive. It gets better. Last month New York Gov. David Paterson said $33.1 million for highway and bridge repair in the...

The latest tally of stimulus spending can be found here. Go to the link and on the upper right will be a listing: *American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Report* The link will be an excel sheet that can be sorted and columns deleted once saved on your computer for easy research. Updated as of 8/28/2009 So far- Stimulus Spending is at: $$18,862,930,793.91 This week's spend was: $998,797,988.94

The Office of Management and Budget has released its annual mid-session review that updates the budget projections from this past May.[1] They show that this year, Washington will spend $30,958 per household, tax $17,576 per household, and borrow $13,392 per household. The federal government will increase spending 22 percent this year to a peacetime-record 26 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). This spending is not just temporary: President Obama would permanently keep annual spending between $5,000 and $8,000 per household higher than it had been under President George W. Bush.[2]

Sunning lazily this week on the rocky shores of Martha's Vineyard, President Obama is in a terrible pickle. He has flushed billions of taxpayers' hard-earned dollars down the toilet "stimulating" the economy, acquiring insolvent car companies, and buying up clunkers that are immediately rendered inoperable by the feds -- an apparent government specialty. Launched from obscurity on the stiff winds of antiwar fervor, Obama now owns an intractable war in Afghanistan that will require years of enormous financial commitment, unshakable patience and unbending determination -- all things that were once in such long supply for the Iraq war. And now...

I’m not materialistic… Think back to your trip to the mall to return a sweater that was the wrong size. Was it really too small or did you realize you don‘t need it? I no longer have control of my gut feeling when shopping. I feel guilty after almost all my purchases. When I see good deals, I don't take advantage of them instead they engulf me. I buy multiples of things I don't need, mostly due to coupons.Coupons are not to help you, sure they can get you a good deal when you have money to spend and things...

Paul Krugman calls for more public spending By Eric Uhlfelder Published: August 23 2009 13:57 | Last updated: August 23 2009 13:57 When asked where the most promising investments for the short term are, Paul Krugman, the most recent recipient of the Nobel prize for economics, candidly exclaims “damned if I know”. But the Princeton economist is certain the US economy would be far worse off without the government’s massive $787bn (£476bn, €553bn) stimulus package. “I can’t come up with any analysis that suggests a superior outcome without this level of deficit spending, both in the short and long run,”...

You know you are in for a treat when you read a letter to the editor and its first sentence includes the words "when I was a student at Harvard." Such was the case with Scott Richard Evans' letter to the Financial Times of August 13. Mr. Evans criticized a previously published article written by Professor Niall Ferguson. The issue was the recession and President Obama's cure by massive government spending. Mr. Evans said this, "As a professor of business, Prof Fergusn must know at least some basic Keynesian economics - government spending to replace collapsing private spending is the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. John McCain is refusing to consider raising taxes to reduce the ballooning deficit. McCain was asked on ABC's "This Week" whether he would make a similar pledge as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to do whatever it takes to bring down the deficit over the long run, such as raising taxes. The Arizona Republican said "no."

The latest tally of stimulus spending can be found here. Go to the link and on the upper right will be a listing: *American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Report* The link will be an excel sheet that can be sorted and columns deleted once saved on your computer for easy research. Updated as of 8/21/2009 So far- Stimulus Spending is at: $17,812,915,025.97