Tag Archives: Waste

News

Obama wants at least 50 billion more for another bailout

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Great article by Hans Bader in the Examiner.

Excerpt:

President Obama now wants Congress to spend $50 billion to keep state governments from laying off their employees.  In essence, this is a bailout for the state-government-employee unions that bankroll liberal politicians.  Earlier, Obama’s allies in Congress proposed spending billions to bail out mismanaged and underfunded union pension funds.

The state governments will never have to pay back any of this bailout money, which rewards them for irresponsibly increasing their employees’ pay much faster than inflation, to levels much higher than in the private sector.

By contrast, the private banks that were bailed out have repaid most of the money they received, while their shareholders lost most of their money–92.6 percent at Citibank.

While millions of private sector employees have been laid off in the current recession, few government employees have been.

[…]Obama has not hidden his bias towards these powerful unions.  As he noted in a 2006 book, “I owe those unions. . .When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away.  I don’t mind feeling obligated.”

How wisely is government money spent, anyway?

$700,000 for research on jokes. (H/T The Blog Prof)

It reminds me of this Monty Python sketch:

This is why the unemployment rate has gone UP with all of this stimulus spending. Government isn’t as efficient at creating jobs as private businesses… government wastes money because it’s not their money. They have nothing to gain by being efficient,  but private businesses have to be efficient.

Bader’s article is worth reading in full because it explains in detail how the Democrats caused the mortgage crisis.

News

A closer look at Obama’s 1-billion dollar “stimulus” earmark

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From the Heritage Foundation. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) likes to say that Congressional earmarking has become the gateway drug to federal overspending.  Is there any better evidence of this theory then President Barack Obama’s $1 billion earmark for a special project in Illinois that was slipped into his failed $862 billion stimulus?  According to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, the Obama Administration awarded $1 billion on August 5th for a Carbon Capture and Storage Network in Illinois:

Today’s announcement will help ensure the US remains competitive in a carbon constrained economy, creating jobs while reducing greenhouse gas pollution.  This investment in the world’s first, commercial-scale, oxy-combustion power plant will help to open up the over $300 billion market for coal unit repowering and position the country as a leader in an important part of the global clean energy economy

This project was an earmark in the stimulus according to a Washington Post story dated March 6, 2009:

Deep inside the economic stimulus package is a $1 billion prize that, in five short words, shows the benefits of being in power in Washington. The funding, for “fossil energy research and development,” is likely to go to a power plant in a small Illinois town, a project whose longtime backers include a group of powerful lawmakers from the state, among them President Obama.

Stimulus seems to be a way of rewarding the people who voted for you with money from the people who didn’t vote for you. At least, that’s the way it is for Obama, apparently.

News

Are the Obamas out of touch with the American taxpayer?

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This is what the UK Telegraph is saying across the pond, because of Michelle Obama’s lavish taxpayer-funded vacation to Spain. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

It is the kind of impunity that has been highlighted on the world stage this week by Michelle Obama’s hugely costly trip to Spain, which has prompted a New York Post columnist Andrea Tantaros to dub the First Lady a contemporary Marie Antoinette. As The Telegraph reports, while the Obamas are covering their own vacation expenses such as accommodation, the trip may cost US taxpayers as much as $375,000 in terms of secret service security and flight costs on Air Force Two.

[…]While the liberal-dominated US mainstream media have largely ignored the story, it is all over the blogosphere and talk radio, and will undoubtedly add to the President’s free falling poll ratings. As much as the media establishment turn a blind eye to stories like this, which are major news in the international media, the American public is increasingly turning to alternative news sources, including the British press, which has a far less deferential approach towards the White House.

The First Lady’s ill-conceived trip to Marbella and the complete disregard for public opinion and concerns over excessive government spending is symbolic of a far wider problem with the Obama presidency – the overarching disdain for the principles of limited government, individual liberty and free enterprise that have built the United States over the course of nearly two and a half centuries into the most powerful and free nation on earth.

These British news sources understand what America is supposed to be better than we understand it ourselves, apparently. They know something is wrong.

First, the billion-dollar bailouts for all of Obama’s suporters, and now this extravagance. Your children will be paying for this, eventually. Every dollar has to be paid back.