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Economy: Senate Democratic leaders have dropped a carefully negotiated bipartisan jobs bill in favor of a narrower measure catering solely to their party's interest. Is this what they mean by a new spirit of bipartisanship?
The charade over the jobs bill — with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid suddenly declaring it null and void after weeks of haggling between the two parties — shows how insincere Democrats are about governing.
Their idea of bipartisanship isn't compromise, but surrender by the opposition party. Anything short of that is a defeat. Reid stepped in and stopped an $85 billon bill that had been painstakingly negotiated by Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Max Baucus, D-Mont., and President Obama.
In its place is a stripped-down $15 billion version, a jobs-lite bill that will create even fewer imaginary jobs. Why did Reid suddenly get cold feet? Was it a pang of fiscal conscience over the trillions he and other Democrats have spent over the past three years? Or something else?
One Democratic senator who supported Reid's move explained it this way to Politico.com: "Grassley and three to four Republicans would have voted for it, but all the other Republicans would have beaten the living s**t out of us (in the 2010 midterm elections), claiming the bill was too bloated."
So it wasn't conscience at work here or a new-found fiscal conservatism. It was pure politics.
What's left is a measure that will do nothing to get jobs growing again. We didn't like the bill when it was $85 billion; we don't like it now at $15 billion.
It includes a $13 billion payroll tax credit for businesses that hire the unemployed. It gives companies a $1,000 end-of-year tax credit for hiring a worker and keeping him or her employed for a year.
But it includes a lot of hidden spending that will further raise the debt and make all of us poorer. For example, it will deposit $20 billion of borrowed money into the federal highway fund — a notorious repository of pork-barrel spending often used to reward unions for their support. And it will spend $2 billion subsidizing bond issues by state and local governments for big construction projects. This too is a sop to the unions, at a time when local governments should be looking to trim their spending.
Taken together, the provisions in the stripped-down measure won't do anything to boost long-term employment. They'll mostly go to companies that would have hired workers anyway.
Leadership: As politicians spend America into the fiscal abyss, Republican Gov. Chris Christie has a novel idea: Freeze spending. For such statesmanship, watch him be demonized like no one before. In his first inaugural, President Reagan noted the spending constraints that individuals face ...
Politics: Didn't Acorn, the corrupt community organizer, get its federal funding yanked after its last scandal? Actually, no. Through municipal middlemen, it's poised to rake in another $4 billion. Where is the outrage? You'd think a group implicated in dozens of electoral fraud cases, ...
Cap-And-Trade: The Grand Canyon State avoids a big economic hole by suspending its participation in a multistate initiative to fight climate change. As climate fraud is exposed, economic reality sets in. Will California follow? Not since King Canute have government officials engaged in an ...
What did the world see as Iran celebrated the 31st anniversary of its Islamic revolution on Thursday? A hollowed-out regime that is better at repressing its own people than at governing, and that after three decades of fervent belief has reached a cynical middle age. The Iranian regime's success in ...
'We have an agreement until 2012 that Russia will be responsible for this," says Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian space agency, about ferrying astronauts from other countries into low-Earth orbit. "But after that? Excuse me, but the prices should be absolutely different then!" The Russians may ...
Posted By: Brownknows(1460) on 2/13/2010 | 6:32 AM ET
Schizophrenia has set into the capitol. Good. For Re-pube-licans to compromise on a bipartisan bill sent the far left over the edge forcing Dirty Harry to nix the deal. The result? Nothing that will help the unemployed, the small businessman, or the American people. Just as with any program the Democrats do pass, e.g. stimulus, or propose e.g. health care reform, cap and trade. Help save our Republic, vote every Democrat out of office in November.
Posted By: dwdrury(675) on 2/12/2010 | 7:50 PM ET
The real cause of global warming: Dimocrat politicians' pants on fire.
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