Despite a persistent recession and soaring budget deficits, Democrats overwhelmingly endorsed the president's request for hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending over the next decade for college loans, early childhood education programs, veterans' benefits and investments in renewable energy aimed at reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil.
Lawmakers also agreed to use a powerful procedural tool known as reconciliation to advance the president's proposal to expand health coverage for the uninsured -- a move that ensures Republicans would not be able to filibuster the legislation. Unlike in 1993, when then-President Bill Clinton unveiled a universal coverage plan that went nowhere on Capitol Hill, Obama has a strong mandate for change from both chambers of Congress and a mid-October deadline for key congressional committees to send legislation to the full House and Senate.
The budget resolution didn't win a single vote from Republican lawmakers, who were enraged that the deficit is projected to exceed $1.2 trillion next year. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) called it an "audacious move to a big socialist government" that piles "debt on the backs of our kids and our grandkids."
Still, the measure passed the House by a vote of 233 to 193 and the Senate 53 to 43. Only 17 Democrats in the House and three in the Senate voted against it, as did Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who announced Tuesday that he would leave the Republican Party.
Approval of the budget blueprint marked a huge victory for Obama on his 100th day in office, but it was not a slam-dunk for him. Lawmakers trimmed his tax-cutting plans, refusing to extend his signature tax credit for working families past 2010 unless it is paid for. They sliced $10 billion from his spending request for non-defense programs in the fiscal year that begins in October and jettisoned his suggestion that another $250 billion would be needed to stabilize the banking system. They also refused to authorize the use of reconciliation for his plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions.
The reconciliation process was created in 1974 to facilitate adjustments of existing spending programs. Former senator John Sununu, a New Hampshire Republican, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says using reconciliation to ram through health-care reform would "circumvent the normal and customary workings of American democracy." But those workings have changed markedly.
The most important alteration of the legislative process in recent decades has been the increasingly promiscuous use of filibusters to impose a de facto supermajority requirement for important legislation. And "important" has become a very elastic term.
It should be difficult for government to act precipitously. "Great innovations," said Jefferson, "should not be forced on slender majorities." Revamping health care -- 17 percent of the economy -- qualifies as a great innovation. This is especially so because the administration and its allies, without being candid about what is afoot, are trying to put the nation on a glide path to a "single-payer" -- entirely government-run -- system. They would do this by creating a government health insurance plan to compete with private insurers. It would be able to -- indeed, would be intended to -- push private insurers out of business.
But when Republicans ran the Senate, they, too, occasionally made dubious use of reconciliation. And Republicans' merely situational commitment to legislative due process was displayed in 2003 when they held open a House vote for three hours until they could pressure enough reluctant Republicans to pass the prescription drug entitlement.
Honestly, first I had seen of this. Obama himself may be the best advertisement for the power of a good education but it will take some time. I still see too many people around here whose kids or themselves are dropping out of high school.
If adopted, they could transform the financial aid landscape for millions of students while expanding federal authority to a degree that even Democrats concede is controversial.
At stake is a plan to expand the Pell Grant program, making it an entitlement akin to Medicare and Social Security. Key to the effort is a consolidation of student lending that would give the U.S. Department of Education a near monopoly over the practice -- a proposal that has mobilized the private loan industry, which lent $55.3 billion to 6.4 million students in the 2007-2008 school year.
Obama outlined his initiatives, which also include incentives for colleges to cut costs and to raise graduation rates, in the fiscal 2010 budget that Congress approved Wednesday, and Democratic leaders said they hope to make them law by October.
This article of his from The New York Review of Books seems even a bit more pertinent, The Need to Roll Back Presidential Power Grabs.
These experiences have crystallized for me the need for Congress and the courts to reassert themselves in our system of checks and balances.[16] The bills I have outlined are important steps in that process. Equally important is vigorous congressional oversight of the executive branch. This oversight must extend well beyond the problems of national security, especially as we cede more and more authority over our economy to government officials.
As for curbing executive branch excesses from within, I hope President Obama lives up to his campaign promise of change. His recent signing statements have not been encouraging. Adding to the feeling of déjà vu is TheWashington Post 's report that the new administration has reasserted the "state secrets" privilege to block lawsuits challenging controversial policies like warrantless wiretapping: "Obama has not only maintained the Bush administration approach, but [in one such case] the dispute has intensified." Government lawyers are now asserting that the US Circuit Court in San Francisco, which is hearing the case, lacks authority to compel disclosure of secret documents, and are "warning" that the government might "spirit away" the material before the court can release it to the litigants.[17] I doubt that the Democratic majority, which was so eager to decry expansions of executive authority under President Bush, will still be as interested in the problem with a Democratic president in office. I will continue the fight whatever happens.
Give it a look here. Give our Democratic Senators a lot of points for sheer pluck. Never have we had the majority in the Senate in my lifetime but our people come up with some really good ideas.
A statement issued by GM bondholders said: “We believe the offer to be a blatant disregard of fairness for the bondholders who have funded this company and amounts to using taxpayer money to show political favouritism of one creditor over another.” The advisers are preparing to issue a counter offer within the next ten days.
GM, in its revised survival plans, made no mention of Vauxhall, its British operation, which employs 5,000 people, nor of the German business operating under the Opel brand with a workforce of 25,000.
Tony Woodley, joint general secretary of Unite, the union, said that a fire-sale by GM of Opel and Vauxhall to Fiat might follow as part of GM’s restructuring. Mr Woodley said that the British, German and Spanish governments should fight such a move because GM Europe needed far more investment than Fiat could muster.
Fritz Henderson, chief executive of GM, admitted that the chance of bondholders agreeing to the debt-for-equity swap by the May 25 deadline was slight. He said: “It’s not impossible, but the bankruptcy is now more probable.”
Thin the headline says it all - very close to the feces hitting the fan. is this a game of chicken or a drag race down a blind alley?
"Thanks to the stimulus plan, a part-time dentist and three other health workers will soon arrive at the health center that sits along Ohio Avenue in the shadows of closed plants. The building, where patients squeeze into in a few examination rooms, will expand to house nearly triple the work force of 35 if a federal grant of $450,000 arrives.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m saying, Thank God,” said Mr. Malone, president of the Madison County Community Health Center, which like other offices here is troubled by budget shortfalls. “Yes, stimulus money makes a difference. It’s created a new sense of hope in this community.”"
***
A drive through Anderson brings to life some of the complex challenges that Mr. Obama inherited, notably the final shift to a service-based economy. A casino with a flashing neon advertisement, “Easy Come, Easy Dough,” sits near a Starbucks and a string of other chain stores, while less than a mile away is a desolate patch once so busy with General Motors workers that plants staggered schedules to keep traffic moving.
These problems are far bigger than one president, particularly because Anderson has been in economic decline since Mr. Obama was a teenager. Its history can be glimpsed in symbols of the past that remain open, like the Lemon Drop Drive In and Gene’s Root Beer.
Norman became a broken man when sterling was forced off the gold standard by a run on the pound and — perhaps more inexplicable to Norman — after a new American president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, chose to devalue the dollar when he didn’t have to. In 1948, a couple of years before he died, Norman wrote: “As I look back, it now seems that, with all the thought and work and good intentions, which we provided, we achieved absolutely nothing… Nothing that I did, and very little that old Ben [Strong] did, internationally produced any good effect — or indeed any effect at all except that we collected money from a lot of poor devils and gave it over to the four winds.”
It would be tempting to dismiss the interwar years as a period of collective insanity, when there were no voices of common sense and reason among the world’s political, economic and intellectual leaders. But that would not be right. The great British economist, John Maynard Keynes, routinely saw the elephant in the room and was ignored until it was too late. Keynes was eventually invited to be a member of the Court of the Bank of England, where he regularly lunched with Norman. “I do enjoy these lunches at the Bank,” said Keynes. “Montagu Norman always absolutely charming, always absolutely wrong.”
A group of Ball State University business and telecommunications student fellows will debut their documentary film entitled Increasing the Odds: Starting a Business. The presentation on April 30 will begin with hors d'oeuvres at 6 p.m. after which the film will premiere at 6:45 p.m. in the Interurban Hall of the Horizon Convention Center.
***
The film features a number of start-up businesses in various stages of development to illustrate the process. Insight from top executives at Vera Bradley, Anheuser-Busch and Ball Corporation represent the large, well-known and developed companies. Muncie's Blue Bottle Coffee Shop and Air Robotics LLC are included in the film to feature younger and smaller start-up companies.
Admission to the film is free and open to the public.
There has been plenty of speculation over what impact the Federal stimulus package will have on Indiana communities. On Friday -- more than 100 days into the Obama administration and two months after the beginning of funds distribution -- E. Mitchell Roob Jr. will discuss the outlook for how dollars will be utilized throughout Indiana, with particular attention paid to the implications for health care information technology. Roob is the Indiana Secretary of Commerce and chief executive officer of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.
Roob will speak in a video conference of the latest TechPoint New Economy New Rules briefing. The conference can be viewed at the Ball State University Alumni Center, with registration to begin at 8 a.m.
There is no charge to attend, but register by contacting Susan Orebaugh at 751-9116 or sorebaugh@muncie.com.
The writer sees what is wrong with Obama's economic policy here. Not having bought the hype, I am willing ot give Obama time. I keep thinking the 100 day thing is an intellectual crutch borrowed from the days of FDR. The mess today is a whole lot worse than in 1932. Reasoning by analogy can never go far with success Barack Obama's audacity of hype crumbles
"Gary, Indiana is like an eagle poised to fly," mayor Rudy Clay tells me, "All we need is the air of the fiscal stimulus beneath our wings and we'll soar once again and make America proud."
***
The mayor has applied for $400 million out of Barack Obama's $787 billion fiscal stimulus plan. Top of his wish list are automatic weapons and Kevlar vests for the police, and some more police to tote them: last year, in this, the crime capital of the Midwest, he had to lay off police officers due to shortage of funds.
The city symbolises the scale of the economic challenge facing Obama as he approaches 100 days in office. If the president is to deliver something more than the "audacity of hype", homes will have to be built in Gary, health care delivered, and a way found for its inhabitants to live on something more than benefits and debt. But much of America is in revolt against what needs to happen for this to be achieved. And Obama's own momentum on the economic front looks weak.
***
If there is a pattern emerging here it is not incompetence but, say Obama's critics, "capture". Both Bernanke and Geithner stood at the heart of the Bush policy elite during the days of dither and denial that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Obama, lacking credible economic heavyweights in his own circle, was obliged to reach into the ranks of Clinton-era Democrats. The irony of Larry Summers' appointment as chief economic adviser was not lost on historians of the credit crunch: Summers had hailed the 1999 law that deregulated Wall Street as "a major step toward the 21st century".
Obama is surrounded by decision-makers who had "drunk the Kool Aid" during the subprime bubble and were profoundly committed to the neoliberal ideology of self-regulation that has now fallen apart. Only the fiscal stimulus truly bears Obama's chosen brand values of audacity and untaintedness. But this, too, is proving heavily problematic.
In January, two Left-leaning members of Obama's transition team laid out radical objectives for the stimulus plan. It would "create or save" between three and four million jobs by the end of 2010 and boost GDP by 3.7 per cent. It would be delivered not primarily through tax cuts but by public spending. And, though construction and energy would account for a quarter of the job creation, more than a million extra health, education and social care jobs would be created, together with 800,000 public sector jobs saved at state level.
***
As Obama's 100th day approaches, the dangers looming on the economic front are clear: neither on monetary, fiscal nor banking policy is there a tangibly successful programme in place. Meanwhile, the economic pain is getting worse, encouraging his opponents to chip away at his credibility.
Both people confirmed that the plan includes the death of Pontiac, famous for the Trans Am sports car and the GTO. Efforts in the last few years to market Pontiac as performance-oriented brand failed to work. The company had said it wanted to keep Pontiac as a niche brand with one or two models, but is buckling under tremendous government pressure to consolidate its eight brands, several of which lose money.
The people said GM won’t have much new information on Hummer, Saturn or other brands, including Europe’s Opel. GM has indicated it wants to focus on four core brands, Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick.
But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.
“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995.
The coalition was financed by fees from large corporations and trade groups representing the oil, coal and auto industries, among others. In 1997, the year an international climate agreement that came to be known as the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated, its budget totaled $1.68 million, according to tax records obtained by environmental groups.
DETROIT — Union leaders said Sunday that they had reached an agreement with Chrysler that meets the federal government’s requirements for the automaker to receive more financing.
The deal also includes Fiat, the Italian automaker with which Chrysler was ordered by the government to form an alliance before Thursday.
Neither the United Automobile Workers union nor the company released details of the agreement, which modifies the union’s 2007 contract and reduces the amount of money Chrysler must pay into a new health care fund for retirees.
DETROIT -- Chrysler’s lenders have delivered another counterproposal to President Barack Obama’s auto task force, as the gap narrows on what the company can pay and what creditors will accept to reduce $6.9 billion in loans, according to a source familiar with the process.
In New York, a group representing Chrysler's secured lenders on Thursday was preparing to send to Treasury its latest terms to wipe out much of the $6.9 billion in company debt they carry. The two sides remain far apart in these crucial talks.
The Canadian Auto Workers said Thursday night they were close to a deal on labor concessions with Chrysler, but with the number of details still to be worked out, talks were expected to continue today.
In Italy, Fiat SpA Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne said he was still committed to concluding an alliance with Chrysler, but reiterated that the Italian automaker would not inject cash to close the deal.
In Washington, the Obama administration's auto task force continued intensive negotiations with the United Auto Workers on an agreement to protect the bulk of workers' health care and pension benefits in the event of bankruptcy.
At an extraordinary moment when the global financial crisis has put governments, rather than auto executives, in the driver’s seat, Mr. Marchionne may have found a way to build an empire with — almost — no money down.
In his first 100 days in office, former President George W. Bush preempted primetime only once, for his State of the Union Address.
Obama is asking for the 8 p.m. slot on Wednesday to discuss his first 100 days in office. This is inconvenient for the networks because it falls during the May sweeps period.
CBS and ABC have lined up new episodes of their comedies, while Fox planned to air a new episode of "Lie to Me." NBC is running a repeat of "Law & Order." (News Corp. owns Fox and The Post.)
The networks got Obama's request on Thursday. Both Fox and NBC said no decision had been made as of yesterday evening. Both networks also have the option of shifting it to their respective cable-news outlets, Fox News and MSNBC.
Considering how well the mainstream press did not cover the Bush White House, considering the crisis to date. perhaps the networks should bite their tongues. As for those complaining aobut too much Obama - it helps to see that guy in the Oval Office is working and not complaining about how hard a job he has.
But a careful analysis of the record shows that the picture is more complex and, ultimately, far less daunting: An investor who invested a lump sum in the average stock at the market’s 1929 high would have been back to a break-even by late 1936 — less than four and a half years after the mid-1932 market low.
How can this be? Three factors have obscured this truth from investors: deflation, dividends and the distinction between the Dow Jones industrial average and the overall stock market.
Other protesters contended that the tax system already strains the vital connection between individual effort and reward and warned that further tax increases might destroy it.
But these accusations don’t withstand scrutiny. The current system is much fairer than many people believe, and the president’s proposal will make it both fairer and more efficient.
Contrary to what many parents tell their children, talent and hard work are neither necessary nor sufficient for economic success. It helps to be talented and hard-working, of course, yet some people enjoy spectacular success despite having neither attribute. (Lip-synching members of boy bands? Money managers who bet clients’ retirement savings on subprime-mortgage-backed securities?)
Far more numerous are talented people who work very hard, only to achieve modest earnings. There are hundreds of them for every skilled, perseverant person who strikes it rich — disparities that often stem from random events.
***
The president’s proposal is modest: raising the top marginal tax rate from 35 percent to 39.5 percent, its level when Bill Clinton left office and well below the corresponding level in most other industrial countries. There has never been a shortage of talented people willing to work hard for success — even in countries with top rates much higher than 50 percent. And the president’s proposal would not cause such a shortage in 2010.
It would, however, promote more efficient provision of public services, in much the same way that contingent fee contracts often promote more efficient provision of services in the private sector. For example, when lawyers are willing to waive fees unless their client wins, wrongfully injured accident victims often gain legal representation they couldn’t otherwise afford. Similarly, when government levies higher tax rates on the wealthy, we can provide public services that the wealthy and others greatly value but that would otherwise be beyond reach. Under such a tax system, the heavier tax bill becomes payable only if we’re lucky enough to end up among life’s biggest winners.
West Lafayette Schools: 2026 Referendum
-
This fall, the West Lafayette Community School Corporation has put a school
funding referendum question on the ballot. If you live in the district, you
s...
The Southwest Airlines Debacle
-
A good technical explanation and a refreshing suggestion: that the remedy
is removing the liability shield and allowing the threat of serious
financial con...
[12+] Dance Moms Abby
-
Created by Collins Avenue Productions the show follows the training and
careers of children in dance and show business under the tutelage of Abby
Lee Mil...
Broken Links Corrected
-
I did a design theme update to the site, so it looks a bit different these
days. There will be some more tweaks as I customize the theme a bit more,
but it...
Bank accounts
-
They're where the money is. Right? Today we want to compare a couple of
public accounts and the relationship between them. One is Indianapolis
public schoo...
Let Bannon and Trump talk. We’ll report.
-
*When a top White House* aide called *The New York Times* on Wednesday to
offer up the sort of cartoonish, press-hating invective that has
characterized Pr...
The Real Motivation of the Pain Caucus
-
Above: Publication Appearing in 3 Weeks At Your Dentist’s Office Insults
Your Intelligence Time Magazine made the smart decision to put its dumb
cover stor...
How did Wisconsin become a cesspool?
-
Well, there's "Anything Goes" with the judges. These writings have
far-reaching implications, not just for the John Doe investigation
underlying the instan...
The Return!
-
Stay tuned...what was once Indy's Painfully Objective Political Analysis
(iPOPA) is undergoing a transformation, but it will be back soon!
This blog has moved
-
This blog is now located at http://blog.animalswithinanimals.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.
For feed subs...
Trouble with the CIB
-
Well folks your friendly neighborhood Capitol Improvement Board
("CIB")needs some help.
You might recall that the CIB is the quasi-government agency that r...
Dartmouth Law Journal calling for papers
-
The Dartmouth Law Journal (DLJ) is a scholarly law review published three
times a year by undergraduate students under the auspices of the
Rockefeller Cent...
