by Kerry Thomas
February 19, 2009
It’s not my place to tell reporters how to do their jobs,
but it seems to me that any local Northern Wisconsin reporter who reports on 7th
District Congressman Dave Obey owes it
to the People of Northern Wisconsin, and especially to the American Taxpayers, to
ask him some tough questions about the American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act of 2009 (the “stimulus bill”).
To read the complete bill click
here. Be sure to pay attention to Division
A (Appropriations Provisions) and Division
B (Tax, Unemployment,
Health, State Fiscal Relief, and Other Provisions)
of the legislation.
As Chairman of the House
Appropriations Committee, Dave Obey was the lead sponsor of the
legislation. How much of the bill did
he write? How much of it did he
read? Does he still claim there are no
earmarks in the legislation? Does he
think there is any “pork” in the legislation?
Only Democrats Obey, Rangel, Waxman,
Lewis (CA), and Camp were allowed on the conference
committee. Why were no Congressional
Republicans allowed on the conference committee that wrote the conference
report (the final version of the bill)?
At 4:00 p.m. on February 10, the House of Representatives
voted without objection (unanimously) to require the text of the agreement
(final version of the legislation) to be made available for at least 48
hours. (CR H1101) So then why were Members of Congress allowed less than 16
hours to read the 1,071 pages of the conference report before voting on it?
The
conference report (H. Rept. 111-16)
was filed at 10:25 p.m. on February 12.
A motion on agreeing to the conference report was called at 2:24 p.m. on
February 13.
The
House vote passed 246 - 183, 1 present, 3 not voting. (Roll
no. 70). 7
House Democrats joined all 176 House Republicans in voting no.
At
5:29 p.m. that same day the Senate passed it 60 - 38. (Record
Vote Number: 64)
The only Senate Republicans who voted yea were Collins and Snow (both
from Maine) and Specter from Pennsylvania.
Ted Kennedy did not vote.
Suffice it to say, no one in Congress read the
legislation before voting on it. They
were told they were voting to spend $787 billion American Taxpayer dollars, but
yet they didn’t feel it necessary to actually read the legislation
before voting on it.
The American People were told this was emergency
legislation. Yet it wasn’t even presented
to the President until February 16, three days later. He then took another day, and needed to make a special trip to
Denver, to sign it into law (Public
Law 111-5), again, without reading it.
I guess the President forgot about his campaign promise to
put such legislation online and allow the American People at least 5 days to
read it before he signed it into law.
If this is emergency legislation, why do less than 40% of
the bills’ provisions take effect in the first year?
This emergency legislation creates more than 200 new federal
agencies. Will these new agencies be
permanent additions to the federal government, or will they go away after a
year or two? What will be the long term
cost of all these new federal agencies?
The Congressional
Budget Office (CBO) estimates the cost of
this legislation at $787 billion.
Interest on this will add another $347 billion to the cost. And CBO told Congressman
Paul Ryan that the total cost of this legislation over time will
exceed $3.2 trillion. And the
Vice-President says about 30% of this will probably be wasted.
This on top of the $1.2 trillion federal budget deficit for
FY 2009. This on top of the $700
billion TARP program. This on top of
the already $10.8 trillion national
debt, of which each and every one of us owes (as
of midnight February 20) $35,313.01. It’s
all borrowed money that will have to be repaid. Who’s going to pay for this?
And how?
Local reporters in Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional
District haven’t asked Dave Obey a tough question in years. It’s time to start.