Watch Out Republicans, the Stimulus is Working!

The major news organizations are all reporting that Ford is posing its first increase in sales since November 2007 -- an increase credited to the "Cash-for-Clunkers" Program. This is the CNN Money story.

In another story, the Associated Press is reporting that the call to increase funding for the program is being heavily supported by industry leaders:

The Senate came under increasing pressure Monday to refuel the stalling "cash-for-clunkers" initiative amid uncertainty over how much money, if any, is left in the fund bankrolling the popular program.

The Obama administration pushed for an additional $2 billion after serving notice over the weekend that the program could expire as early as this week unless the Senate acts, as the House did in voting overwhelmingly for the money last Friday.

* * * *

Fierce lobbying for keeping the program running came from several quarters. The National Automobile Dealers Association and the American International Automobile Dealers said they were contacting thousands of dealerships and encouraging them to bombard the Senate with phone calls and e-mails.

"This is the one true stimulus that seems to be working out of all the things that have been tried in the last few months," said Cody Lusk, president of the international dealer association.

In my humble opinion, the program makes sense. It gives the economy a jolt while, at the same time, increasing fuel efficiency overall in the U.S. Who can be opposed to it?

But as usual these days, the Party of Herbert Hoover wants to "Just Say No" to more funding. The New York Times quotes Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina (who also opposes health care reform) as saying:

Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, said the “cash for clunkers” program was an example of the “stupidity coming out of Washington right now.”

“The federal government went bankrupt in one week in the used-car business, and now they want to run our health care system,” Mr. DeMint said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “This is crazy to try to rush this thing through again while they’re trying to rush through health care, and they want to get on to cap-and-trade electricity tax. We’ve got to slow this thing down.”

At the same time, Senator John McCain has announced that he will lead a filibuster against the funding increase.

Will the Republicans come to their senses and admit this part of the stimulus is working? Or are they bound and determined to be DeMinted? Stay tuned.

Return of the House of Hypocrisy

The GOP Tea Parties have spawned another tide of hypocritical hand-wringing by Republican office-holders. But at least Democrats are fighting back. As reported by the Mississippi Democratic Party in a press release today:

JACKSON -- State Democratic Chairman Jamie Franks today responded to statements made by Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant during Wednesday's tea party at the state Capitol. Bryant told the crowd that President Obama's stimulus package was a waste of taxpayer money.

"The stimulus package is providing the State of Mississippi with millions of dollars for projects that will create jobs and improve the infrastructure of our cities and our counties," Franks said. "If creating jobs and rebuilding our roads is a waste of money to Phil Bryant, then perhaps we need to protest his leadership in the Senate."

Franks said the stimulus package will also provide tax cuts for working Mississippians, a fact he said Republicans like Bryant and Congressman Gregg Harper have repeatedly ignored. "Thanks to President Obama, working families will receive up to $800 in employee tax breaks," Franks said. "The reason you don't hear Republicans talking about this tax cut is because it helps the middle class, not the richest among us." The stimulus package will provide the following benefits to the State of Mississippi:

55,100 additional children will be provided health insurance.

997,000 workers will receive a tax credit on their paychecks.

30,000 jobs created over the next two years.

63,000 students aided by making the American Opportunity Tax Credit refundable.

"President Obama and Democratic leaders are offering workable solutions to the financial mess the Bush Administration and a Republican Congress got us into," Franks said. "Instead of posing for cameras in front of the Capitol, perhaps Bryant and Harper should go inside and figure out how to lend a helping hand to the people who are suffering because of the policies of their party."

Coincidentally, Y'all Politics pointed its readers yesterday to a blog post that reported the latest statistics on "earmarking" by Members of Congress, and guess who is the All-Star of Earmarking? A Mississippi Republican.

The Y'all Politics post is here

The story says:

Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group critical of pork-barrel spending, released a summary, called the Pig Book, of congressional earmarks at a news conference Tuesday.

* * * *

Sen. Thad Cochran, R- Miss., reported more than $650 million for earmark projects such as research of dietary supplements, mosquito trapping and for the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference. He was the recipient of "The Super Thad Award," for being the senator with the highest value in earmarks.

There you have it. On the one hand, Republicans grandstand to fight against Big Government Spending. On the other hand, they bend over backward to spend the most money.

House of Hypocrisy, Part Two

Our local conservatives are singing from the same hymnbook as their heroes, the House Republicans. One particularly ugly rant was posted on the blog Jackson Jambalaya, attacking an article written by Ronni Mott of the Jackson Free Press. The title of the JJ post was "Is Ronni Mott a Liar, Hack, or Just Plain Stupid?" You can read the whole post here: http://kingfish1935.blogspot.com/2009/02/is-ronni-mott-liar-hack-or-just-plain.html

What the JJ blogger calls a "lie" is this sentence by Ms. Mott: "The [stimulus] bill’s passage proved to be highly partisan—with Obama and the Democrats on one side and the nearly the entire GOP lined up against it—despite the president’s best efforts to reach across the aisle."

Ronnie Mott's whole story is here: http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/index.php/site/comments/stimulus_transparency_021709/

Perhaps our local conservatives should check the actual statements of the House Republicans. Now that the stimulus bill has been enacted into law, they are falling all over themselves to tell their constituents what wonderful things have been included. One of many catalogs of these comments has been posted on Jake Tapper's blog on ABC News' website. You can find it here: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/02/back-at-home-co.html

Here's a sampling of what House Republicans say when they get back home:

Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, for instance, issued a press release last week heralding how he "won a victory for the Alaska Native contracting program and other Alaska small business owners" by working with Democrats to pull a provision from the Senate bill that he feared would hurt American Indian and Alaska Native owned businesses.

Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., issued a press release saying, “I applaud President Obama’s recognition that high-speed rail should be part of America’s future.”

Rep. Pete Hoesktra, R-Mich., "tweeting" to his homefolks: "If you know of someone thinking of buying first home, now may be the time. Stimulus incentive is very generous! Up to 8k! Check it out."

In New Jersey, Rep. Leonard Lance, R-N.J., toured a Army Corps of Engineers construction site that will likely get stimulus dollars. "This is a classic example of a "shovel-ready' project," he said.

In Kirksville, Mo., Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., visited Truman State University where he said: “Within the stimulus package there is some Pell Grant money, which is a good thing. It helps students be able to pay for their education and that's kind of a long term stimulus effect there. I mean obviously that's not gonna provide a job in the next 120, 180 days, but the ability of someone to get an education is an economic development tool."

Sen. Kit Bond, R. Mo., heralded $2 billion in funds in the stimulus bill to jump start low income housing projects. "Bond says the $2 billion amendment is small potatoes in the nearly $800 billion package, but it will save jobs, employing more than 3,000 people in Missouri alone," the local paper reports.

So if Republicans had "no input" into the stimulus package, why are they falling all over themselves to TAKE CREDIT for it?

What happened -- just as Ronni Mott reported -- is that the Obama Administration reached out to Republicans, then included spending items and tax cuts that had their support. (The President also excised items after Republicans complained -- the family planning funds come to mind).

Only after they got much of what they wanted through private discussions, did the Republicans quail about the overall cost of the bill. Their complaint that they "never saw the language" until the day it was proposed rings hollow -- the Bush/Paulson bank bailout was only a page long but had support from both sides of the aisle.

So leave Ronni Mott alone, folks. She's dead-on right. Again.

Expropriate the Expropriators -- By Purchasing Their Stock?

In the wake of the $750 Billion Bush Bailout, and the even bigger $1.5 Trillion Geithner plan to create incentives for reform of the financial services industry, some economists are calling for a more direct fix: let the Government purchase common stock in banks and use the voting power of that stock to force real change.

An interesting story on that concept comes, surprisingly, from Fortune magazine's website. You can read it here: http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/12/news/banks.tough.love.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009021213

The article explains that:

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said Tuesday that the administration seeks to restore the flow of credit in the economy by offering $1 trillion in financing for consumer and business loans, a $500 billion plan to induce private investors to buy troubled assets from banks and $50 billion for foreclosure relief.

Fortune then quotes an economist at Brown University to explain the alternative:

Ross Levine, an economics professor at Brown University, said if the government starts buying common stock in banks, it will show that it is serious about taking control of troubled institutions and protecting the taxpayer.

"If you go refilling the bank accounts of the architects of this crisis, people are going to have an emotional reaction," said Levine. "You can't make the recovery plan a direct gift to the existing owners and managers of these enterprises."

If the government actually owned common stock in banks, it would allow regulators to have more of a say in how the banks are managed going forward.

This is a real indication of how the debate in this country has moved sharply to the left. Can you imagine what would have been said if either the Carter or Clinton Administrations had engendered talk of federal ownership of bank stock? Not even FDR contemplated such a bold move.

In his grave at London's Highgate Cemetery, Karl Marx is surely smiling. In Chapter 32 of Das Kapital, he wrote:

The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist shell. That shell is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.

I don't think Marx meant to say that the expropriators would be expropriated by the purchase of their common stock by the people . . . but then, who could have predicted that?

While We're At It, Why Not Fix The Student Loan Debacle?

You may remember that I previously posted about the problems with the privatization of student debt. http://jimcraigsworld.blogspot.com/2009/01/next-financial-bubble.html

Now there is a movement afoot to provide loan forgiveness of student debt -- a powerful shot of economic stimulus. If the millions of dollars of student loans were paid off or forgiven by the Federal Government, those recently-educated people, many of them with new jobs and new families, would pour the saved loan payments back into the economy.

But there is a more important issue. After the Government privatized student debt, the loan sharks in bankers' clothing surfaced, and are now literally crushing the lives of persons who were motivated to go (or go back) to college to better themselves.

You can help:

1. If you are on Facebook, you can join the FB group "Cancel Student Loan Debt to Stimulate the Economy": http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=46657437878

2. You can also sign the on-line petition on the issue:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Real-Economic-Stimulus-Forgive-Student-Loans

3. Write or call the White House, your Representative, and your Senators.

The Huffington Post has already noted the momentum behind this idea:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-chattman/forgiving-student-loan-de_b_164103.html

Let's make it a reality!

Don't Listen to Them, Mr. President

The President is facing near-unanimous Republican opposition to his economic policy. But he doesn't need to stare too much at his rear-view mirror -- the Republicans he left in the dust last November are still there. Jason Linkins on The Huffington Post reports a new ABC News poll that shows that 67% of Americans approve of President Obama's plan to use public spending to stimulate the economy. That means, of course, that at least 13-14% of Americans who voted against the President are in his corner on the need for the stimulus. The same poll shows 58% disapproval of Congressional Republicans' stonewalling. 51% of those polled consider the plan's passage to be "critically important," with "Only 16% say it is 'not that important.'"

Linkins' excellent report (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/09/poll-obama-stimulus-effor_n_165206.html) also explains that the "moderate Senators' plan" does NOT cut "pork," but instead reduces funds for State governments and school construction:

Senators Ben Nelson and Susan Collins have been allowed to skate by and issue fundamental falsehoods about what they have done to the bill. . . . . [t]he two Senators claim to have "funded education," and have ensured that the bill will contain "robust spending on infrastructure to create jobs, $87 billion in assistance for states, and assistance to schools, especially for special education and Pell grants." [But in fact their plan includes]:

* Elimination of $25 billion in flexible funding for state governments.

*Cut $7.5 billion in funding for "state incentive grants" to help states make progress toward No Child Left Behind goals.

* Eliminated $19.5 billion in construction aid for schools and colleges.

* Reduced new aid for the Head Start early childhood program by $1 billion.

Nowhere in their statement do [Senators] Nelson and Collins make any effort to justify these decisions. Indeed, they don't even seem prepared to admit that they made these decisions.

Don't stop now, Mr. President. Remember that it was the Republicans who would only vote for the Bush Bailout after $100 billion in pork was added to the Fall package. Take care of the people and we'll take care of the GOP doomsayers.