| Obama's Address 090811 | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Sep 8 2011, 06:09 PM (3,445 Views) | |
| LTC8K6 | Sep 13 2011, 01:17 PM Post #181 |
|
Assistant to The Devil Himself
|
Dear Director Lew: Last week, the president delivered an address to a Joint Session of Congress announcing a second economic stimulus package. News reports have stated the total cost of the proposal nears $450 billion. The president assured us that every penny of it would be paid for. Following the president’s address, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney declared that “the president will submit a bill early next week, the American Jobs Act, which will specify how he proposes paying for the American Jobs Act.” Meanwhile, the president urged on Monday: “No delays. I’m sending this bill to Congress today, and they ought to pass it immediately.” When we received a copy of the legislation yesterday, we were expecting the Office of Management and Budget–which enjoys a five hundred person staff–to provide a precise and detailed estimate of the fiscal impact of the president’s proposal. But no such information was provided. This is not satisfactory. Perhaps even more troubling, however, is that despite the emphatic promise that we would learn yesterday how the bill would be offset, this information is missing too. Given the depth of the economic crisis we now face–slow growth, high debt, and chronic unemployment–the lack of fiscal detail that has been provided to Congress is both disappointing and irresponsible. The president is asking America to borrow half a trillion dollars for a second stimulus package–one that exchanges a short term infusion of federal cash in exchange for a potentially permanent increase in taxes and debt. OMB must provide to Congress and the American people, at a minimum, the basic information that demonstrates in detail, as promised, how this bill will be funded. This information should be provided without delay. Specifically: — A table showing the expected budgetary impact, by specific policy, of the legislation on an annual basis for fiscal years 2011 through 2021 (the period covered by the president’s most recent budget submission). — A schedule showing the added interest that the federal government would have to pay on an annual basis and the resulting change in the federal debt (because it is unlikely that the specific offsets contained in the legislation would equal the effect on the budget of the specific proposals intended to encourage economic growth). — A table illustrating projected changes to the deficit for each of the next ten fiscal years as a result of this legislation. (The bill would presumably create a sudden increase in near-term borrowing, but the offsets are stretched out over a decade. The debt limit agreement saves $7 billion in budget authority or next year’s annual appropriations; this bill, regardless of the offsets, would wipe those savings out.) We may have raised our legal debt limit but we have breached our economic debt limit. America’s $14.5 trillion gross debt is now 100 percent of GDP. A prominent study from economists Rogoff and Reinhart–praised by Treasury Secretary Geithner as “excellent”–shows that when a nation’s gross debt reaches 90 percent of GDP they lose, on average, a percentage point or more in GDP growth each year. Our debt is depressing growth to unexpected levels and destroying jobs today. When the president submitted his budget in February you declared: “our budget will get us, over the next several years, to the point where we can look the American people in the eye and say we’re not adding to the debt anymore.” In reality, the budget would have increased our debt by $13 trillion. Rhetoric alone will be insufficient during this time of crisis. We need numbers. And they should be provided at once. Very truly yours, Jeff Sessions Ranking Member Edited by LTC8K6, Sep 13 2011, 01:18 PM.
|
![]() |
|
| Baldo | Sep 13 2011, 01:43 PM Post #182 |
|
Obama's jobs plan complicates task of debt panel WASHINGTON (AP) — Members of a special House-Senate deficit-cutting "supercommittee" urged their colleagues Tuesday to go beyond the panel's minimum spending-cut target of $1.2 trillion over the coming decade, but the price tag on President Barack Obama's $447 billion jobs plan is complicating the panel's work. "We need to 'go big' and reach savings of more than $1.5 trillion to address long-term deficits," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. "We need to 'go long' and address our long-term budget issues. And most importantly of all we need to 'go smart' and address the budget without preconceived dogmas or political agendas." As the panel convened its second session, it also got a sobering message about the budget deficit's toxic effect on the economy over the long term from economist Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Elmendorf warned that spiraling interest payments could swamp the government's ability to pay for its operations and could spark a financial crisis if nothing is done: "Under current policies, the federal budget is quickly heading into territory that is unfamiliar to the United States and to most other developed countries as well." "The nation cannot continue to sustain the spending programs and policies of the past with the tax revenues it has been accustomed to paying," Elmendorf said in a statement. "Citizens will either have to pay more for their government, accept less in government services and benefits, or both." Obama's jobs plan calls for a temporary boost in spending on roads, schools and blighted neighborhoods combined with cuts to the Social Security payroll taxes paid by workers and their employers. He would pay for the initiative with a tax increases on wealthier workers, oil companies and hedge fund managers — all proposals that are opposed by the GOP. Elmendorf, a former Brookings Institution scholar initially named to the CBO post by Democrats, said that Obama's jobs plan — which combines tax cuts with spending stimulus — was well within mainstream economic thought which holds that it doesn't make sense to raise taxes or impose sharp spending cuts in periods of slack economic growth. "If policymakers wanted to achieve both a short-term economic boost and medium-term and long-term fiscal sustainability, a combination of policies would be required: changes in taxes and spending that would widen the deficit now but reduce it later in the decade," Elmendorf said. But every dollar spent stimulating the economy makes the supercommittee's task that much more difficult. Co-chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, is clearly irked "This proposal would make the already arduous challenge of finding bipartisan agreement on deficit reduction nearly impossible, removing our options for deficit reduction for a plan that won't reduce the deficit by one penny," Hensarling said recently. "It's not the role of this committee to spend more money we don't have on jobs we don't get."....snipped http://hosted2.ap.org/COGRA/e109e277e48c4e219e07a1d4710177b3/Article_2011-09-13-Debt%20Supercommittee/id-862d457b3999424ea97c92954872eacb |
![]() |
|
| kbp | Sep 13 2011, 01:58 PM Post #183 |
|
To which followed; “This is the bill that will help our economy in a moment of national crisis. The only thing that’s stopping it is politics.” He declared that it to have been stopped by politics BEFORE he had even actually submitted the deficient plan. |
![]() |
|
| Kerri P. | Sep 13 2011, 06:18 PM Post #184 |
|
http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/09/13/reid-not-sure-if-obamas-jobs-bill-can-pass Reid Not Sure if Obama's Jobs Bill Can Pass September 13, 2011 As President Obama continued to tout his new jobs bill campaign-style in the battleground state of Ohio, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., focusing instead on a potential disaster relief fight with Republicans, was unable to outline a path forward for the $447 billion plan. "I don't know exactly what I'm going to do yet with the president's jobs bill, but we're going to have a full caucus meeting on it on Thurs," Reid told reporters, saying merely that he had introduced the bill Tuesday. A number of Democrats have previously opposed some of the ideas in the bill. When asked if he had the votes to pass the legislation as is, the leader said only, "We'll see probably at later time." Reid plans a briefing for his Democrats Thursday from White House officials "for people who don't understand it," and leadership aides tell Fox that committee chairs have been encouraged to hold hearings, though none have yet been announced. Meanwhile, Republicans hit the president for filling the bill with ideas that have "been around the track," as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell put it Tuesday. snip..... |
![]() |
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · LIESTOPPERS UNDERGROUND · Next Topic » |






1:59 PM Jul 11