stimulus

It seems a lot of the right is gaga over Rick Perry and his entering the 2012 race. The media is working hard to talk him up and he will most likely become the front runner at a pretty rapid pace.

So what do we know about Rick Perry? Unless you live in Texas or follow politics really closely then the answer is not much. So let's start off with some things Perry has done, especially this from Bob Cesca:

Texas, which crafts a budget every two years, was facing a $6.6 billion shortfall for its 2010-2011 fiscal years. It plugged nearly all of that deficit with $6.4 billion in Recovery Act money, allowing it to leave its $9.1 billion rainy day fund untouched.

“Stimulus was very helpful in getting them through the last few years,” said Brian Sigritz, director of state fiscal studies for the National Association of State Budget Officers, said of Texas.

Even as Perry requested the Recovery Act money, he railed against it. On the very same day he asked for the funds, he set up a petition titled “No Government Bailouts.”

“Join our fight and add your voice to a growing list of several thousand Americans who are fed up with this irresponsible spending that threatens our future,” Perry wrote on his blog on Feb. 18, 2009.

Yup - as Rick Perry was out there blasting the stimulus as a "waste of money" and even using it as an excuse to remove Texas from the union, he was sitting out there, with a big grin you would expect to find on a snake-oil salesman, hand opening, going "gimme, gimme!". This guy is another one of those big hypocrites that is plaguing the Republican field.

For two years we have heard Republicans complain that the stimulus didn’t spark any projects in Ohio. Even John Boehner repeated this claim over and over again. So then why this legislation?

A measure banning signs that tout federal stimulus spending along Ohio's roadways cleared the Republican-led Ohio Senate and is expected to pass the House, also controlled by the GOP.

State Sen. Tim Grendell, a northeast Ohio Republican who championed it as an amendment to the state transportation budget, said the proposal made common sense. The bill with Grendell's change cleared the Senate unanimously on Wednesday.

Grendell said taxpayer dollars were being spent to advertise the Obama administration. Democrats who at the time controlled the House blocked the proposal from becoming law last session.

If we are worried about tax dollars being spent for Presidents administrations, then does that mean the Ronald Reagan Cross County Highway signs will not be replaced? How about the Ronald Reagan Lodge in our local park district, which is tax payer funded?  What about the tax payer dollars spent in Hamilton, Ohio to build a status of George Bush after he signed NCLB here?

For people that campaigned on fixing the budget and creating jobs, they sure have spent a ton of time on some of the most petty things.

For someone who is always out campaigning against federal spending, Rick Perry sure seems hell bent on seeing some federal money:

Texas officials filed a lawsuit Thursday against the U.S. Department of Education, seeking to overturn the federal agency's rejection of the state's application for more than $830 million in aid that has been tied up in political wrangling.

A state-specific provision inserted into a federal law by a Democratic Texas congressman requires that Republican Gov. Rick Perry promise Texas will maintain certain education spending levels through 2013 in order to get the funds. Perry has called the requirement unconstitutional because the Texas Constitution prohibits him from committing future state spending.

Texas applied for the money anyway, but was rejected because its application included a caveat saying the state would not violate its own constitution. Federal officials urged the state to reapply without the caveat.

Of course it’s all the Democrats fault, just like when the Democrats forced Perry to spend stimulus money on rebuilding the Governor’s mansion.

Well imagine that. S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford was out for months blasting the stimulus. All the media covered it and his declarations of not taking any stimulus money almost nonstop. Well that has changed:

Two months ago, however, with the bright lights of political promise dimmed by a scandal involving an extramarital affair, Mr. Sanford quietly signed a bill passed by the Legislature that expanded eligibility for unemployment benefits. The move paved the way for the state to claim $97.5 million in stimulus money to bolster its financially ailing unemployment insurance trust fund.

The federal Department of Labor announced Tuesday that South Carolina had officially cleared its approval process and that the stimulus money was being released immediately.

And the other thing that has changed? The media is silent on Sanford’s big flip-flop.

From a Washington Post breaking email alert:

Sales at U.S. retailers rose more strongly than expected in March as consumer stepped up purchases of vehicles and wide range of goods, government data showed on Wednesday, suggesting a broadening of the manufacturing-led economic recovery.

The Commerce Department said total retail sales jumped 1.6 percent, the largest increase since November, from an upwardly revised 0.5 percent rise in February. Sales in February were previously reported to have gained 0.3 percent.

I wonder how much of this is because of people getting back larger tax refunds this year? It would play into the fact that more middle class Americans will be more willing to spend their money than the top 2%. It also would be another indicator that the stimulus is working.

Yes it is:

Unions and liberal groups have dismissed Sen. Harry Reid’s $15 billion jobs bill as "puny" while calling for larger stimulus measures.

More than two dozen organizations, including the AFL-CIO, National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP) and National Council of La Raza, warned Democratic leaders in Congress to avoid tackling the troubled economy through incremental action.

They urged the Senate to pass the $15 billion jobs measure, which features a hiring tax cut for small businesses, but called for much more legislation to bring down an unemployment rate the White House projects to average 10 percent this year, more than 9 percent next year and over 8 percent in 2012.

"If this $15 billion was the only thing [that passed], that would be like having an amputated arm and sticking a Band-Aid on the end of it," said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, on a conference call Friday.

This bill is 1/71 the size of the TARP bill. It’s another example of how the people of this country just don’t matter to the lawmakers in Washington.

Now that the American people have bailed out the banking system and our leaders are looking at ways to recoup the hundreds of billions of tax dollars we have spent, Wall Street is starting to look at ways to get out of paying us back.

According to an article in today’s New York Times, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, which is the main lobbying arm of Wall Street, sent a e-mail to the heads of Wall Street’s legal departments last week saying that the tax may be unconstitutional since it would single out big banks. They have also hired Carter G. Phillips of Sidley Austin, an attorney who is no stranger to the Supreme Court, to review the proposal and determine if it could be considered unconstitutional.

When introducing this proposal last week, President Obama sent a warning shot to Wall Street, saying: “Instead of sending a phalanx of lobbyists to fight this proposal or employing an army of lawyers and accountants to help evade the fee, I suggest you might want to consider simply meeting your responsibilities.” Now it seems like Wall Street isn’t intent on doing that and instead wants to fight their responsibilities.

This becomes another gloomy chapter in corporate America’s milking of the people. They stood with their hands out when is was time to pass out money from the stimulus, but now that the government wants to take action to recoup costs and maybe prevent further failures, Wall Street is turning their noses at us. You can just hear Gordon Gecko muttering those famous words: “greed is good.”

It looks like John Boehner has a problem with accurately filing paperwork required under the FEC:

Since 1996, Boehner's congressional campaign committee has received 63 letters from the Federal Election Commission requesting "additional information" to correct seeming errors in reports the committee submitted.

That total surpasses similar FEC requests to Ohio's 17 other representatives. Rep. Steven LaTourette, R-Bainbridge Township, is second with 40.

Instead of addressing the issue, Boehner’s people decided to take the approach of a juvenile:

"There is zero comparison between an administration using fictitious data to sell a failing 'stimulus' and a campaign that files amendments to keep its FEC reports as accurate, updated, and transparent as possible," said Don Seymour, a spokesman for Boehner's campaign committee.

They couldn’t even own up to their mistakes? This really would have been a non-story if they didn’t jump on the “Timmy did it to mom” defense. Instead Boehner has now proved that he doesn’t have what it takes to lead by not being able to accept his own responsibility.