Free Republic

More than $9 trillion -- in taxpayer dollars -- has been pledged, committed, lent or spent by the federal government in response to the economic crisis. Some say that if the economy continues to deteriorate, trillions more might be necessary to prevent another Great Depression. Yet no one has investigated how this crisis happened. That is irresponsible. A comprehensive investigation is essential to prevent this from happening again.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - John McCain lost the 2008 U.S. presidential election to Barack Obama but has since won a leading role in Republican efforts to rein in Obama's big-spending economic revival plans. In the past week, the Arizona senator helped head a Republican charge in the Democratic-led Senate that stalled a $410 billion bill to keep government operations funded through the end of this fiscal year, September 30. "If it sounds like I'm angry it's because I am," McCain roared on the Senate floor. But after plenty of fiery debate, the bill was expected to win final congressional approval in...

It is no secret that being a Republican isn’t the most hip political stance a person can take right now. President Obama has successfully established himself as the hippest politician around. You know you’re big when Katy Perry wears a dress with your face on it to host the MTV Europe Music Awards. To my fellow Republicans: I’m sorry, I wish I could be more positive about the current “hipness” of our party. But being a Republican is about as edgy as Donny Osmond. Granted, being “hip” is not a reason to join a political party, or a reason to...

(CNN) – Fresh off public complaints about her own love life, Meghan McCain has a new target for her most recent gripes: conservative commentator Ann Coulter. In a new blog post for the Daily Beast as Ann Coulter and HBO host Bill Maher are kicking off a week-long debate tour today in New York, McCain calls President Obama “the hippest politician around” and says being a Republican is “about as edgy as Donny Osmond.” And she blasts Coulter for helping to “perpetuate negative stereotypes” about Republican women. “I straight up don’t understand this woman or her popularity,” says McCain. “I...

WALLACE: The stock market has dropped 20 percent since the Obama inauguration. Can this now fairly be called the Obama bear market? MCCAIN: No, I -- I think I'd leave -- like to leave that up to the experts. But I do believe that a $1.2 trillion stimulus package -- add that to a $750 billion TARP, add that to this $480 billion supplemental, add it to another TARP that's coming down -- massive deficits, and we are committing generational theft. We are laying a debt on future generations of Americans. . . . . . WALLACE: Back in 2002,...

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham defended earmarks he inserted in the federal budget, including one U.S. Sen. John McCain, Graham's close friend and the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, listed as one of the "10 Porkiest" projects in the budget. Graham has also urged President Obama to veto the budget Graham says has too much pork. Earmarks are one-time spending items members of Congress insert in the budget that are typically sent to projects and programs in their own states. Graham earmarked $950,000 for the Myrtle Beach Convention Center. He has by one count 37 earmarks in the federal budget. "I voted...

Sen. John McCain said the Obama administration should've let General Motors fold, rather than keeping it on life support. General Motors should hand over the factory keys to a bankruptcy court, two top Republicans said Sunday. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the best thing for the ailing automaker to do would be to go into Chapter 11 to reorganize some of its business agreements and come out stronger than before. "I think the best thing that could probably happen to General Motors, in my view, is they go into Chapter 11, they reorganize, they renegotiate ... the union-management contracts and...

WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain is rewriting the part of presidential loser. Unwilling to vanish into retirement like Bob Dole, or retreat into academia like Al Gore, or even quietly convalesce like John Kerry, Mr. McCain has quickly reclaimed a place on center stage in Washington, some days skewering President Obama and the Democratic Party, and on other days standing by their side. “I’m the, as I said, loyal opposition,” Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, proclaimed this week. “And both words, I think, are operative.” If anyone wondered which John McCain would return to the Senate — the coalition-building dealmaker...

President Obama, joined by Senator John McCain and Senator Carl Levin, discussed a review of how contracts are awarded. the new york times

Senator John McCain is not giving up his fight against earmarks, even though the Senate rejected his attempt on Tuesday to strip them from the spending bill going through Congress. The Arizona Republican and former presidential candidate announced yesterday he's teaming with Democratic Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin to introduce legislation to give the president a line-item veto to block earmarks. McCain said earmarks, which critics call pork barrel projects, represent a "corrupt practice" that has consumed Congress. Feingold said he believes this legislation would pass constitutional muster because Congress would have to vote whether to agree to the earmark...

The Senate voted overwhelmingly to preserve thousands of earmarks in a $410 billion spending bill on Tuesday, brushing aside Sen. John McCain's claim that President Barack Obama and Congress are merely conducting business as usual in a time of economic hardship. McCain's attempt to strip out an estimated 8,500 earmarks failed on a vote of 63-32. The Arizona senator's proposal also would have cut roughly $32 billion from the measure and kept spending at last year's levels in several federal agencies. Last year's Republican presidential candidate said both he and Obama pledged during the campaign to "stop business as usual...

Four months after he lost his bid for the White House, no one in the Senate really knows what to make of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). This week McCain tried to strip most of the earmarks from a pending $410 billion omnibus spending bill. The effort failed. While the former GOP presidential candidate managed to rally 30 of his Republican colleagues behind his amendment, once it was struck down, 27 of them were happy to abandon the stand and accept their millions of dollars in earmarks, now secure in the bill. The moment seemed to answer a question raised immediately...

A bill to end cost overruns in major weapons systems would create a powerful new Pentagon position -- director of independent cost assessments -- to review cost analyses and estimates, separately from the military branch requesting the program. Those reviews, unlike in the current process, would take place at key points in the acquisition process before a weapons program can proceed, according to legislation sponsored by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) Last year, the Government Accountability Office reported that cost overruns on the Pentagon's 95 largest weapons acquisitions system totaled about $300 billion, even though...

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 11:32 am Priorities -- Not lining the pockets of contractors Last week the President laid out the foundation of a new vision for our budget and the way government does business. It is a vision based not on ideology, but on the idea that we can and must invest boldly in our future while also making the hard choices and being vigilant to bring in a new era of fiscal responsibility.Last week began with the fiscal responsibility summit, where the President and members of Congress came together to generate ideas to get the country on a sustainable long-term track. One of...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is moving to overhaul the way the U.S. government awards contracts for work to be done by the private sector, saying there have been too many abuses of taxpayer money. Obama joined Republican Sen. John McCain, his presidential campaign rival, and other congressional figures Wednesday to put his pen to an executive memorandum. The document essentially commits the administration to new marching orders for awarding such contracts, and Obama said that it could save up to $40 billion to $50 billion a year. One area in particular that is targeted is no-bid contracts, which...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – With former presidential rival Sen. John McCain and other congressional critics of government waste by his side, President Barack Obama changed another Bush-era policy Wednesday, announcing a plan to change how the government awards private sector contracts. “It’s time for a government that only invests in what works,” Obama said when calling for new spending guidelines. “And what’s encouraging is that there is broad, bipartisan consensus on behalf of reform.” Obama reserved special criticism for defense contractors, saying that the majority of the waste “comes from influence peddling and indefensible no-bid contracts that have cost American taxpayers...

CAVUTO: Let me ask you. This comes at a time when there are all sorts of rumors in Washington that you and the president, though you started hitting it off — he had this dinner for you, I think, the night before inauguration, and then he was talking about how crucial your support was on the troop drawdown in Iraq — and then it seemed like the wheels kind of came off the goodwill wagon. What has happened here? MCCAIN: Neil, I am the loyal opposition.I work with the president, as I did on the Iraq issue. I will work...

Link only, per FR copyright and posting policy

March 3rd event will bring leading experts from U.S. and abroad to Capitol Hill.Embargoed: February 18, 2009, 6:00 a.m. EST Contact: Ben Edwards Email:Bedwards@cgdev.org, Tel: +1 202 416 0740 Further information available at www.usclimatesymposium.comWASHINGTON, February 17, 2009 - U.S. legislators and business leaders will meet with experts on climate change economics and policy at the Capitol building in March to discuss the challenges and opportunities for U.S. leadership on climate change, it was announced today. U.S. and international policymakers will join climate experts for the one day bipartisan and bicameral event. The cosponsoring Senators to date are Senators Bingaman (D-NM),...

Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, says his party has lost two elections in a row - "big-time'' - and it's time to rally anew. On the spat that radio's Rush Limbaugh has stirred with President Barack Obama, prompting the White House and Democratic Party alike to assert that radio's "Rush'' is the new voice of the GOP, McCain had this to say on the FOX News Channel today: "I think there's a lot of voices in our party. Rush Limbaugh is one of them,'' McCain told Neil Cavuto on FOX's Your World with Cavuto. "(RNC Chairman) Michael...