Why is President Obama asking for an additional $50 billion in “emergency” stimulus spending to “save the jobs” of one of the Democrats' core support groups, namely unionized public employees?
I know, I know -- dumb question...
It's a deliberate maneuver designed to keep the ever-increasing legions of so-called “public-sector employees” both fully employed -- high salaries, raises, benefits, and all --
and happy while those of us in the private sector have to contend with the very real world economic woes created by our “leaders” (term used exceedingly loosely, and with more than a hint of contempt...).
The $50 billion is actually a gift to organized labor -- The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (
AFSCME), The Service Employees International Union (
SEIU), the National Education Association (
NEA), and the
AFL-
CIO. You know -- Big Labor. The same folks that just threw $10 million of their members' dollars in the toilet in their unsuccessful bid to unseat and punish Arkansas Democrat Senator Blanche Lincoln. And, lest you think that's just me, gettin' all negative (a trait I've been accused of), here is the quote from
Slate.com (an extreme left-wing outlet, BTW), citing an unnamed “senior administration official:”
“...organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet on a pointless exercise. If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November. ”
But I digress...
Obama sent a letter to Congressional leaders this past Saturday asking them to quickly approve this new "emergency spending" to, as he put it, avoid:
“...massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters.”
It never ends, does it?
The BS, I mean.
What about the balance of last year's $787 billion stimulus (
porkulus) package? You know -- the one that Obama said the Congress MUST pass immediately in February, 2009 or else the unemployment rate would climb to over 8%?
Well... THAT part of the
hopey-
changey thing hasn't worked out real well now, has it? Nationally, the unemployment rate is 9.7%, but that is artificially low because the government hired over 411,000 temporary workers to “work” taking the Constitutionally-mandated census. The figure is ALSO artificially low for reasons I
pointed out back on June 4th.
Back to 2009's $787 billion stimulus package -- of the total amount, $500 billion was never spent.
Let me type that
s l o w l y so that you can read it
s l o w l y :
$500 BILLION of the $787 BILLION “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” (a.k.a. “stimulus” or “porkulus” package) hasn't been spent. Yet.
That's right, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, cats and dogs, and ships at sea...
The Democrats "back loaded" the
porkulus package stimulus bill nearly a year and a half ago, meaning that the majority of the spending is,
and always has been by design, slated to take place between now and next November's elections.
It's the Democrats' “secret weapon;” their “ace in the hole,” so to speak, to help them in their attempt to buy electoral success in the upcoming elections. A good chunk of those $500 billion unspent dollars is available to flood the economy in the next +/-140 days, so they can say (or, so the plan is for them to be able to say), “See? The economy is improving! We're creating and saving jobs! We're so wonderful! Vote for us!”
The Democrats' passed their pay-as-you-go legislation (
PAYGO) and Obama signed it this past February. Under the law, all increases in spending are supposed to be offset either by cuts somewhere else or by tax increases. Obama, getting in one of his countless "blame-Bush" swipes, after signing the bill said in his weekly radio address:
“Now, Congress will have to pay for what it spends, just like everybody else. After a decade of profligacy, the American people are tired of politicians who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk when it comes to fiscal responsibility. It’s easy to get up in front of the cameras and rant against exploding deficits. What’s hard is actually getting deficits under control. But that’s what we must do.”
Continuing to bash Bush, The One went on:
“It was the abandonment of this rule that allowed the previous administration and previous congresses to pass massive tax cuts for the wealthy and create an expensive new drug program without paying for any of it...”
The only problem is that any spending that the politicians call “emergency” spending is exempted from
PAYGO requirements.
That's what led to Republican Senator Jim
Bunning being vilified last February by both the Democrats and their water carriers in the press for “blocking unemployment” when, in fact, he was simply saying that, under
PAYGO, the unemployment extension should be,
and could be paid for with existing funds. The Democrats'
faux outrage (once more abetted by their media enablers) was repeated again in late March when Republican Senator Tom
Coburn was branded as the next
eeeeeeevil Republican trying to “block unemployment” when he, like
Bunning before him, was simply saying that, again under
PAYGO, the latest unemployment extension should be, and could be, paid for with existing monies.
Why has every unemployment extension bill been an “emergency” bill when there is this HUGE untapped pool of federal dollars created nearly a year and a half ago? Why is
Obama's latest urgent plea to Congress yet another “emergency?”
The answer is simple -- the Democrats care not one whit for the unemployed, or so-called job-creation.
This is, and always has been, about power.
And Democrats retaining it.
At all costs.
Literally.
That money is needed to help them to attain that goal; the public be damned.
The fly in the ointment here is the embarrassingly inept “handling” of what is the largest environmental disaster we have ever seen by our golfing, vacationing, partying, hob-
nobbing with Paul McCartney, looking-for-
someone's-ass-to-kick, (did I mention golfing?) empty-suit-in-chief and his political cronies AND their blatant attempt to politicize this disaster to further their goal of enacting the
Global Warming bill,
Cap and Trade legislation, now re-named American Power Act.
Citing the Gulf oil disaster, The Chosen One will push hard in his teleprompter address to the Nation tomorrow night for enactment of his next socialist power-grab, the re-christened yet same-old, same-old American Power Act. Going to
Las Vegas? You can bet on it.
Let us pray that the electorate hasn't been dumbed down to the extent that they actually buy into these subterfuges by the social engineers that seem hell-bent on destroying our once-proud nation and replacing it with their vision of
progressivism/socialism.
Remember in November.
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