How hard can it be to find out who in the transition camp said what to whom about the U.S. Senate seat, Ben Smith coyly asks. Well, it seems that Rahm Emanuel who has been sulking and snapping at the media did have some chats. And, gosh he suggested some names to Blago. Well, that seems important. And you would think that might have come out on day one, when Barack Obama declared that “we” — no make that “I” — didn’t have any chats with Blago about the Senate seat. Right about now is when you’d want to get all the facts out and be perfectly clear about what the Chief of Staff of the next President said to a loony governor about his scheme to sell the Senate seat.
And if they are lacking for probing questions, the RNC is offering up some. My favorites are these:
Did Anyone On Your Team Speak With An SEIU Official About Your Replacement?
Did Anyone From The Obama Team (Transition Team, Senate Office Or Otherwise) Have Contact With The Governor Or His Office About Anything Related To The Senate Seat Prior To Election Day Or After?
Why Didn’t You Correct Axelrod When He Said You Had Spoken To Blagojevich About Picking Your Replacement?
Did Anyone On Obama’s Team Discuss With Jesse Jackson Jr. Any Of Jesse’s Interactions With Blago About The Seat?
The Obama team, and the country as a whole, would be well advised to follow Pete’s sage advice: Be forthcoming. And I would add: Promptly.
The GOP is back!
GOP hates earmarks – except the ones its members sponsor
By David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Republicans are expected to deliver a daylong rant Wednesday against Democratic spending legislation, yet the bill is loaded with thousands of pet projects that Republican lawmakers inserted.
Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, included $142,500 for emergency repairs to the Sam Rayburn Library and Museum in Bonham, Texas. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., joined state colleagues to include $1.425 million for Nevada “statewide bus facilities.” The top two Republicans on Congress’ money committees also inserted local projects.
In all, an estimated $3.8 billion worth of specific projects, called “earmarks,” are in the $410 billion spending bill that the House of Representatives is to vote on Wednesday. Easy passage is expected. The Senate is expected to act soon, too, since federal agencies will run out of money a week from Friday unless new funds are enacted.
House Democrats estimate that Republicans inserted 40 percent of the earmarks in the bill. An independent budget watchdog group, Taxpayers for Common Sense, said the 60-40 Democratic-Republican ratio followed historical patterns.
David Brooks’s column today notes that Number One is voting “present” on the health care reform that he eventually wants to be part of his legacy. I guess that, once Tom Daschle resigned as Health Care Czar, Number One decided to call it a day and leave it to the Democrats in Congress to formulate the brand-new health care system that is going to be imposed on all of us. Should be great: With Harry Reid’s help, we’ll probably get to take magnetic levitation trains to and from the hospital, while we wait there indefinitely for care.
Of course this approach also permits Daschle to have his cake and eat it: he can now shape the health care bill while at the same time making millions as a health care lobbyist.
Attaboy, Number One: Number One first, America last.
“Do the markets hate Obama?” In a word, “yes.”
Obama is like the man who sees his neighbor’s house on fire and figures that neither of this close proximity neighbors has enough insurance to rebuild .. so he starts the neighbor’s house on the other side on fire.
The only thing left to the imagination is whether the fires on both sides of his house are enough to cause his house to burn to the ground.
No one has yet addressed the optimistic assumption that all this taxing will actually increase revenue to the government. I thought we learned quite some time ago that bills that increase taxes and bills that increase revenue form a weakly overlapping set. If, as I would anticipate, the Obama tax increases lead to a drop in revenue and a growth in deficits, what does he do then? Will there be any rich left to soak?
As Margeret Thatcher said, “Eventually they run out of other peoples’ money.” In Obama’s case, “eventually” may be very, very soon.
I thought that’s what liberal and Obama cultist followers wants spent, spent and spent.
40 percent is nothing compare to what Obama is in store for you all.
Obama will level the playing field. He does not stay with Reverend Wright for nothing.
the man who does not exist ( if you were to go by commentarys coverage of him) is mounting a charm offensive
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/19378.html
good luck with that
Romney is finished. Conservatives want a true conservative, reform candidate. Romney is not that man, but he would make a good Treasury Secretary.
In yesterday’s “Washington Independent”: The 2010 budget outline unveiled by President Obama this morning projects $646 billion in revenue from a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions by 2019. Environmentalists will cheer, but a fierce debate looms large.
According to the proposal, beginning in 2012, the administration expects to bring in about $80 billion per year from the program, which requires greenhouse gas-emitting companies to buy carbon allowances and permits them to sell excess allowances in a carbon market to other companies that pollute more. Most environmentalists prefer cap-and-trade, which is already in place in Europe, to a carbon tax, because cap-and-trade allows the government to control, and slowly reduce, the overall emissions in the country. The idea is opposed, however, by many industry leaders and congressional Republicans. . . .
(OMB Director Peter Orszag) explained the mysterious math that led to the $646 billion revenue projection from selling allowances over the next ten years and revealed it to be … well, pretty mysterious.
“What we specified in the budget is a cap-and-trade target,” Orszag said. There are a number of paths to reach this target, and the budget team did not get into specifics when creating its projection. “Under any plausible path,” Orszag said, “there is sufficient funding to do the energy efficiency investments” and finance tax credits for low- and middle-income workers, as specified in the budget.
“We are expecting that cap-and-trade will raise at least $600 billion,” he continued, adding that any additional resources would be used to offset higher energy costs for households across the country.”
No matter how you look at it, that’s a tax increase that’s going to be paid by the American citizen, over $60 billion a year.
It turns out that Orszag is the architect of the Obama tax/spend monster. Coming over from a term as director of the Congressional Budget Office, he has specialized in budgetary issues related to health care, retirement and pensions, and climate change. His ideas are what will shape changes to health care in America for the forseeable future. Here are his thoughts on climate change: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/08/AR2008070802465.html
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McCain also favored cap and trade during the election. It will be interesting to see where he comes down on this.
Its very hard to have so many detractors within a party that it prevents your getting nominated. In the primaries, you typically have a multi-way race, and what counts is supporters within the party. McCain had more detractors within the party than any other candidate, and how did it hurt him in the nomination battle? At least at the moment, Palin certainly has more supporters than anyone else.
A Peter Orszag presentation at the New America Foundation: http://www.newamerica.net/events/2007/cbo_director_peter_orszag_release_new_study_rising_cost_health_care