Draining the Swamp

[jamiebk]

I suppose certain perqs are typical, but where do we draw the line? If circumstances arise where it is essential that Pelosi (or anyone) fly non-stop on military transport, then fine...until then..follow the normal protocols.

[Shapley]

Since the Speaker of the House is second in line of succession to the President, don't you think she rates a certain accomodation in the event Cheney croaks and we're left with GWB as President?

If Akaka becomes speaker, do we owe him a plane that'll go nonstop to Honolulu?

[GreatCarouser]

Since the Speaker of the House is second in line of succession to the President, don't you think she rates a certain accomodation in the event Cheney croaks and we're left with GWB as President?

If Akaka becomes speaker, do we owe him a plane that'll go nonstop to Honolulu?

Yes!
Next question?

[GreatCarouser]

Meanwhile, while the Pubs fritter and dissemble a heavy duty dredging operation is going on:
Waxman follows the money

I love that dog Burton's use of his time...

So how many round trips to CA (or Hawaii for that matter) would recovery of this money pay for?

[Shapley]

Well, Mr. Palermo didn't bother to get all his facts straight:

New York Times article on the Funds

Mr. Bremer defended his performance as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, noting that the United States had to bring tons of American dollars into Iraq because the country had no functioning banking system.

“We had to pay Iraqis in cash,” Mr. Bremer said of the money, most of which came from Iraqi oil sales. “Delay would have been demoralizing and unfair to millions of Iraqi families.”

Government auditors have repeatedly criticized the American and Iraqi governments for failing to monitor the money once it reached Iraq.

Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is the committee’s new chairman, acknowledged that he had no evidence that Iraqi insurgent groups had received any of the cash. But he suggested that it was possible, given how much money was rushed into the country.

[Haggis@wk]

Elections matter

The new Democratic majority begins dancing the next phase of the tax-and-spend minuet in the House of Representatives today. Following the example set by their Senate brethren last Friday, House Democrats will adopt a budget resolution containing the largest tax increase in U.S. history amid massive national inattention.

Nobody's tax payment will increase immediately, but the budget resolutions set a pattern for years ahead. The House version would increase non-defense, non-emergency spending by $22.5 billion for next fiscal year, with such spending to rise 2.4 percent in each of the next three years. To pay for these increases, the resolution would raise taxes by close to $400 billion over five years -- about $100 billion more than what was passed in the Senate.

It had been assumed that the new Democratic majority would end President Bush's relief in capital gains, dividend and estate taxation. The simultaneous rollback of Bush-sponsored income tax cuts was a surprise.

This reflects Democrats' belief that they can survive a long-term commitment to bigger government. Here is an audacious effort to raise the banner of fiscal responsibility while increasing spending and taxes.

The nation gave the Democrats the majority in both chambers of Congress. What did we get? No decrease in federal spending; the Democrats want to grow the government by 2.4% each year, which would mean adding close to $100 billion in spending each year.

In order to do that, they want to increase taxes across the board, choking off economic growth and making people even more dependent on the government.

By 2011, the added tax burden on every taxpayer would be over $1100 dollars. Twenty-six million small businesses would have to pay almost $4,000 in extra taxes. More than five million Americans whose incomes are too low to pay taxes now would have to start paying in 2011, making the Democratic plan more regressive than what it seeks to replace.

Well, Shos always said he was willing to pay more taxes to balance the budget; I wonder how he’ll feel about paying more taxes to expand the budget deficit?

[Shapley]

This, of course, is what they are trying to reverse:

Federal Deficit Down Sharply in First Quarter of FY2007

[Haggis@wk]

The new Congress has barely made it past its start before a new face has been put on lobbyist influence. Dianne Feinstein, the senior Senator from California, has resigned her leadership position on a subcommittee which put billions of dollars into her family's business

SEN. Dianne Feinstein has resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee. As previously and extensively reviewed in these pages, Feinstein was chairperson and ranking member of MILCON for six years, during which time she had a conflict of interest due to her husband Richard C. Blum's ownership of two major defense contractors, who were awarded billions of dollars for military construction projects approved by Feinstein.

As MILCON leader, Feinstein relished the details of military construction, even micromanaging one project at the level of its sewer design. She regularly took junkets to military bases around the world to inspect construction projects, some of which were contracted to her husband's companies, Perini Corp. and URS Corp. ...

As of December 2006, according to SEC filings and http://www.fedspending.org, three corporations in which Blum's financial entities own a total of $1 billion in stock won considerable favor from the budgets of the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs:
* Boston Scientific Corporation: $17.8 million for medical equipment and supplies; 85 percent of contracts awarded without benefit of competition.
* Kinetic Concepts Inc.: $12 million, medical equipment and supplies; 28 percent noncompetitively awarded.

* CB Richard Ellis: The Blum-controlled international real estate firm holds congressionally funded contracts to lease office space to the Department of Veterans Affairs. It also is involved in redeveloping military bases turned over to the private sector.

Wasn't it the Democrats who insisted that the Republicans jumped into bed with lobbyists and special interests? Well, now we have a senior Democrat who made sure that over a billion dollars of federal money got routed through her own checkbook, with her husband as proxy. When can we expect to see a Democratic investigation into this brand of corruption?

Personally, I see why the Republicans deserved to lose last Nov……they were amateurs trying to play in the big league. Fortunately, the Dems will finally get to really shine.

Think there’s going to be any special prosecutor for her?

Can you imagine what the media uproar would have been if a Republican padded his family's bank book to the tune of of a BIL$?

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

As they pointed out in our DAWIA briefings, political realities can sometimes influence the acquisition cycle.

And that's the politest way I can phrase that.

[OperaTenor]

Geez, if this was such a crime, why didn't the Republicans investigate it while they had control of Congress, which was right up until about 8 weeks ago?

The goodness of their hearts?!

Shrill.

[Haggis@wk]

Geez, if this was such a crime, why didn't the Republicans investigate it while they had control of Congress, which was right up until about 8 weeks ago?

The goodness of their hearts?!

Shrill.

The goodness of their hearts? You pretty much answer your own question, they didn't know about it. Considering the way Cunningham got hammered, they would have surely gone after her!

Shrill? The woman puts over a billion dollars of our money in her checking account and then the only consequences she faces is that she resigns from the committee?

Please, you use to at least fake your sincerity of being fair minded better than this. The woman is a thief, I don't care what party she belongs to.

She makes Cunningham look like a piker and he's going to die in prison.

Shrill indeed.

[Shapley]

Haggis,

She had a very similar problem with conflicts of interest during the COSCO/Long Beach deal, when her husband was heavily invested in Chinese businesses that stood to benefit from the deal. The connection was pointed out, and then quietly faded away...

V/R
Shapley

[jamiebk]

"Nobody's tax payment will increase immediately, but the budget resolutions set a pattern for years ahead. The House version would increase non-defense, non-emergency spending by $22.5 billion for next fiscal year, with such spending to rise 2.4 percent in each of the next three years. To pay for these increases, the resolution would raise taxes by close to $400 billion over five years -- about $100 billion more than what was passed in the Senate."


Ironic, isn't it, that Bush has spent $400,000,000,000 on the "war" already. Does anyone think this can be sustained and NOT raise taxes to pay for it??

[Haggis@wk]

I am unpleasantly surprised at the degree of comfort the Democrat majority is showing this early in actually proposing to kill the Bush tax cut AND plan a breath taking tax increase that beggars the imagination.

I can only assume they have some expectation of staying in power for the next decade or so.

Oh well, at least the MSM will make the tax increase seem like good news.

[Haggis@wk]

"Ironic, isn't it, that Bush has spent $400,000,000,000 on the "war" already. Does anyone think this can be sustained and NOT raise taxes to pay for it??

I'm not sure I understand your point. The planned increases are "non-defense, non-emergency." Defense and the war are not included in these increases, that another pot entirely.

This is just what it smells like; The grandmother of all pork deliberately planned to keep them in office.

[Shapley]

Ironic, isn't it, that Bush has spent $400,000,000,000 on the "war" already. Does anyone think this can be sustained and NOT raise taxes to pay for it?

Yes. In case you haven't noticed, tax receipts are at an all-time high, specifically because of the tax cuts. Of course, shelling out an additional $400 billion requires fiscal restraint in other areas, which the Republican Congress was unwilling to exhibit and the current Democrat Congress is totally opposed to...

[Shapley]

To back up my claim of record tax receipts:

Deficit Shrinks Due To Record Tax Receipts

Higher taxes will lower tax receipts, due to their adverse effect on economic activity.

[OperaTenor]

I'm tellin' ya, I'm nearly cured!

[jamiebk]

[quote="Haggis@wk"]I'm not sure I understand your point. The planned increases are "non-defense, non-emergency." Defense and the war are not included in these increases, that another pot entirely. quote]

Oh...I get it. The "war" funding comes out of some other pot somewhere in the great big blue sky...not out of our actual budget.

I am not sure how you budget your money, but around our house, we have two items...Income and expenses. When we spend more than we make we have to take it out of savings. If we don't have money saved, we have to borrow it. The only other option is to increase our total income somehow. Shap believes that this is achieved by lowering the taxes (for whom?). Wahtever the case, the government is still outspending its income, albeit not by as much:

The amount of revenues collected from October through January were up 9.7% from the same period a year ago, climbing to a record level for the period of $834.1 billion.

Government spending also set a record for the period, but the growth was a slower 2.1%, pushing the total to $876.3 billion for the first four months of the current budget year.

Meanwhile, the total debt of this nation as of 3/29/07 is $8,836,852,277,711.00. (That's Trillion $'s)

Borrow and spend or tax and spend...neither is an acceptable option to me. Spending needs to be curtailed and they can start with the arterial bleeding of money for the "war".

[Haggis@wk]

Oh...I get it. The "war" funding comes out of some other pot somewhere in the great big blue sky...not out of our actual budget.

You seem to keep missing the point. The Democrats are proposing increases in spending above and beyond what will be spent on Defense and emergency spending in those years. Spending for defense will be considered separately, so in your example above, the Congress will spend another $400Bil in addition to the $400Bil you mentioned.

And that money will be coming out of your's and my pockets

”Borrow and spend or tax and spend...neither is an acceptable option to me.”

Increasingly it’s not acceptable to Congress so they just use the same trick as the S&L bailout. Its called off budget spending and it’s getting worse every year

Remember the big payout back in the early 90's to bail out the Savings and Loan fiasco? Theoretically that never happen since Congress decided that part of the the expense was “off budget” and therefore not included in the budget.

Trust me, if you ran your household budget the same way the U.S. Congress runs our national budget you'd be in jail for fraud.