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Posted on 02/09/2009 11:16:23 AM PST by Vendome
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Try Dianne Feinstein of California
Who on the Democrat side is weak on the PORK bill?
Let EVERYONE OF THEM KNOW that WE THE PEOPLE ARE going to get them if they continue. Rush said the calls are 100’s to one AGAINST the pork bill AND that the volume rivals the Amnesty bill tried last year.
Make them SCARED, make them ALL scared. The news media is NOT going to report just how scared they should be but we all know the media LIES.
Call the LYING MEDIA TOO!
I heard Evan Bayh might be a possibility, or one of the guys from South Dakota?
I heard that reported on FOX but when I listened to what she actually said it was that she didn't want to vote for the bill because it was full of tax cuts. I did call all of her offices and told them to let Sen. Feinstein know I was strongly against the bill. Unfortunately she and Boxer are my Senators.
Bayh is hosting Obama’s first big sales pitch in IN...
I’m sending an e-mail to all of them.
Though a Democrat, he governed here (with some exceptions) with a degree of fiscal sanity. He was a businessman, and got votes from business here in Virginia, both when he was elected as governor, and to the Senate recently.
He campaigned as a pro-business Democrat, and during the debates did not side with Obama on most fiscal issues. I voted for Gilmore, so don't think for a minute I like Warner, I'm just trying to answer the question.
Warner is already on the outs with most liberal dems, and thus has little to lose. I am aware he voted for this thing, but I think he could be turned.
Some Democrat may figure it out that seizing this opportunity to oppose Obama on the stimulus monstrosity may not carry much political risk, and could vault one into the favorite position to oppose Obama four years from now.
Good! I have had some responses directly from senators.
The following was received this morning from Senator Jon Kyl
Thank you for contacting Senator Kyl’s office to express your concern about the so-called economic stimulus bill that is now before the Senate. Senator Kyl opposes the legislation and has been fighting hard against it. You might be interested in his weekly column and a news story that appeared in yesterday’s edition of the Arizona Daily Star. Both are reprinted below.
Thanks again for caring enough to share your views.
Tim Glazewski
Office of U.S. Senator Jon Kyl
* * * * *
KYL COLUMN
February 9, 2008
“Targeted, Timely, and Temporary”
By U.S. Senator Jon Kyl
One of the first items on President Barack Obama’s agenda was, in his words, a “targeted, timely, and temporary” economic stimulus bill.
Congressional Democrats instead used this mandate to create a trillion-dollar spending bill filled with earmarks, pet projects, and spending that will do little to stimulate the economy.
It isn’t timely because over half of the discretionary spending in the bill won’t occur until 2011 or after. Hopefully, the recession will be over by then.
It isn’t temporary because it creates over 24 new government programs and the mandatory spending (which Congressional Democrats are unlikely to cut) will cost nearly $300 billion over the next 10 years.
And it isn’t targeted because it makes the same mistake as last year’s rebate checks. The theory was that individuals would spend these checks, thereby helping businesses (and subsequently, the economy).
But it didn’t work that way. Instead, over 80 percent of the money was saved, because families understood their first priority in uncertain times is to pay off debt (like credit card debt), not go on a spending spree.
The equivalent of last year’s $600 rebate is a reduction in tax withholding of $20 a week, which is the centerpiece of this bill. The result will be no different since most families need to continue to tighten their family budgets, not start spending more.
In addition to the hundreds of billions being spent on initiatives which will have little stimulative effect, the bill is also laden with pork and unrelated spending. For example, there was a provision that would have provided a $256 million tax credit to Hollywood movie studios.
There are also provisions to provide hundreds of millions for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and millions more to World War II Filipino veterans in the Philippines. I agree with a recent Washington Post editorial that these “potentially meritorious items...do not belong in legislation whose reason for being is to give U.S. economic growth a ‘jolt,’ as Mr. Obama himself has put it.”
Everyone is struck by the absolute seriousness of the crisis that faces our country, and we can’t afford to waste the opportunity to do things that will actually help. But simply throwing over $900 billion of taxpayer money against the wall and hoping it trickles down won’t work.
A bill of this magnitude should have been constructed from the bottom up with things we know will stimulate the economy and create jobs, not with things that fulfill campaign promises or spending that Congressmen haven’t been able to get approved over the last eight years. Despite assurances from the President that the bill would embody both Democrat and Republican ideas, virtually every Republican effort to improve this bill with amendments was soundly rejected by Senate Democrats.
For example, there was a measure I authored with Senator John Thune of South Dakota. It would have made serious changes to existing tax law for families and small businesses, creating almost twice the amount of projected jobs as the Democrat bill, but at half the cost to taxpayers. There was an amendment by Senator John McCain to cut some of the unrelated spending and earmarks from the bill, but that, too, was rejected by Democrats.
The massive government expansion proposed by the Democrats’ trillion dollar spending bill is the wrong prescription for our ailing economy. It won’t stimulate economic growth, but will only serve to increase the indebtedness of our children and future generations.
U.S. Senator Jon Kyl is the Assistant Republican Leader and serves on the Senate Finance and Judiciary committees. Visit his website at www.kyl.senate.gov.
* * * * *
Published: 02.08.2009
McCain, Kyl not on board
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Southern Arizona’s Congressional delegation is split down party lines on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, District 8, joined fellow Democrat Raúl Grijalva in support of the stimulus legislation.
In a Jan. 28 statement, she said passage of this bill was the crucial start to put the economy back on track and reverse the trend of more than 500,000 American jobs being lost each month.
Arizona’s Republican Senators Jon Kyl and John McCain are among the leaders in the U.S. Senate seeking to squash or dismantle the bill. The size of the stimulus package and what they see as pork-barrel projects top their list of objections.
President Obama’s plan - modified by House Democratic leadership - sailed through the House (244-188) without a single Republican vote on Jan. 28, a mere two days after it was introduced.
The Senate, however, is a different story. Democrats are the majority in the Senate, as in the House. However, the Democrats do not have a filibuster-proof majority of 60 seats in the Senate to keep minority Republicans from blocking bills through protracted debate and delaying final action on the package.
A tentative agreement was reached Friday night among key senators and the White House for a $780 billion bill. A conference committee would resolve disagreements between the two chambers’ versions.
Kyl and McCain adamantly oppose the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 in any of its forms. Among their concerns:
Cost
“The total cost of that legislation is almost as much as the annual discretionary budget for the entire federal government. President Obama has said that the stimulus legislation will create or save 3 million jobs, which means the bill will spend about $275,000 per job,” said McCain in a statement Tuesday.
Kyl, on Fox News Sunday last week, said he is concerned with the long-term costs: “If you throw in the interest, it’s over a trillion. It’s about $1.3 trillion.”
Pork projects and the wrong vehicle
McCain said Tuesday, “It is unfortunate that, even in these difficult economic times, members of Congress could not resist the temptation to load up this bill with hundreds of millions of dollars in unnecessary spending that will do nothing to stimulate the economy.”
In a Senate floor speech Wednesday, Kyl criticized state and local governments for sending “their wish list of things they would like to get.” Instead of plunking these wish lists into a stimulus bill, Kyl said they should go through the appropriations process.
“It is not just a giveaway to local communities,” he said.
On Kyl’s list of excesses: Swimming pools, bike paths, parking garages, a skateboard park, a dog park and plenty of museums, including the Scottsdale Museum of the West.
Like-minded McCain said Tuesday: “While many of the items in question involve programs worthy of federal funding, they should be authorized and appropriated under the normal budget process and not included in what is supposed to be an emergency stimulus bill intended to create jobs.”
McCain was among a group of senators that offered an alternative with a price tag of about $421 billion. The focal point of the one-year plan was cutting in half a 6.2 percent payroll tax on employees.
Extended timing of the stimulus
In Kyl’s floor speech Wednesday, he said: “The Congressional Budget Office, nonpartisan, says only 12 percent of the discretionary spending in the bill will be spent by the end of this year and less than half of the total of the discretionary money will be spent by the end of the following year. So more than half of the bill starts spending in the year 2011. I hope the recession is over in 2011.”
“Buy American”
The idea of buying only American goods sounds good, but it sets in motion parochial protectionism that would hurt U.S. companies seeking to sell their products abroad, according to McCain.
“The Senate version of the stimulus bill goes beyond the stark protectionism of its House counterpart in a way that risks serious damage to America’s economic well-being. . . . These anti-trade measures may sound welcome to Americans who are hurting in the midst of our economic troubles and faced with the specter of layoffs. Yet shortsighted protectionist measures like ‘Buy American’ risk greatly exacerbating our current economic woes,” said McCain in a Senate floor speech Wednesday.
“And it seems clear that this provision violates our obligations under more than one international agreement,” he added.
President Obama has asked that a final version of the bill be on his desk by Feb. 16, Presidents’ Day, giving the two chambers only eight days to resolve their Grand Canyon-sized differences.
“Stimulus Bill Vote No”
We don’t know that it will be a “stimulus” bill. It purports to be a stimulus bill; but there is no evidence that it will stimulate the economy. All we can be sure of is that it’s a “spending” bill.
i went our former governor bayh a note telling him to oppose this bill or we will do everything possible to prevent him being reelected. he was rather fiscally moderate to conservative as gov.
Evan? I wouldn’t think so but he just received a call from me and I posted at his website.
I remember him. I kept promoting him to my liberal friends who try to correct me thinking I meant John Warner.
While he is in the opposition I agree with your post.
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