Oct/090
Congress Fights Transparency
Congressional Hall
What a joke! What are these guys scared of when posting bills online. Even this won’t help too much but why not allow the American people who are interested in seeing what their government is pushing on them by simply posting the bills online?
And wasn’t this one of Obama’s campaign promises to post bills and agenda’s online before voting on takes place? Why is Obama not out there excoriating these people and letting them know that this is what he wants them to do?
Bringing trancpericy to our federal government is going to take a lot of hard work and spine. These people know that allowing the American public to see what they are doing and what they are voting on will lead to backlash and possibly the end of their terms.
Follow the Jump to read the Source article:
What you don’t know can hurt you:
» House energy and global warming bill, passed June 26, 2009. 1,200 pages. Available online 15 hours before vote.
» $789 billion stimulus bill, passed Feb. 14, 2009. 1,100 pages. Available online 13 hours before debate.
» $700 billion financial sector rescue package, passed Oct. 3, 2008. 169 pages. Available online 29 hours before vote.
» USA Patriot domestic surveillance bill, passed Oct. 23, 2001. Unavailable to the public before debate.
Sep/090
Taking Over American Education: the final chapter
Congressional Hall
Bill Name Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009 Bill Category Amendment Extented Title To amend the Higher Education Act of 1965, and for other purposes.
Bill Summary This information is intended to be a nonpartisan summary and may not include all specifics contained in the full text of the bill. Further research may be necessary in order to make an informed decision. This bill does several things. First, this bill increases, by $490, the maximum Pell Grant amount that can be awarded to students. This bill also allocates money to be given in the form of grants to states for programs to promote the completion of post-secondary education, especially for minority groups that are underrepresented in higher education. This bill also states that if a student is called up for active duty in the military, and has taken a loan to pay for that portion of his/her schooling, then that portion of the loan will be repaid for him/her. If a student has more than $150,000 in assets, then that student will not be eligible for Pell grants, loans, or work assistance. Also this bill includes language that would prohibit federal funds from what are called certain indicted organizations, specifically the community organizing group ACORN. Bill Type House Bill Interest Education, House of Representatives, Monetary Sponsor George Miller (D) California Co-Sponsor
09-17-2009 Passed/agreed to in House: On passage Passed by the Yeas and Nays: 253 – 171 (Roll no. 719). 07-27-2009 Reported (Amended) by the Committee on Education and Labor. H. Rept. 111-232. 07-15-2009 Introduced in House
CBO estimates 705 billion in loans, 70% of all loan volume over the next 10 years.
Bill Upends System for College Loans
By COREY BOLES and ROBERT TOMSHO
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125321217589620383.html
(See Corrections & Amplifications below)
WASHINGTON — House approval of an education-financing bill Thursday marks a first step toward sweeping changes in U.S. higher education that would cut out private lenders and leave the government as sole provider of student loans under federal programs.
The bill, which passed on a largely party-line 253-171 vote, would save taxpayers $87 billion over the next decade by ending fees paid by the government to private lenders, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Among other things, the House bill would use the anticipated savings to increase grants for low-income students and boost funding for minority students.
The cost of student loans wouldn’t change as a result of the overhaul, according to the Obama administration. The only difference would be the source of the loans — the government as opposed to private lenders.
While the measure would eliminate private lenders from originating government-backed loans, banks and other lenders would be allowed to bid for a limited number of contracts to service government-made loans.
Richard Hunt, president of the Consumer Bankers Association, said Congress and the Obama administration should “consider alternative approaches that maintain choice for students and protect local jobs” at banks. Ending private lenders’ ability to originate government-backed loans “is a step in the wrong direction and at the wrong time,” he said.
The House vote follows two years of turmoil in the student-loan industry. In 2007, Congress reduced government payments to lenders making federally guaranteed student loans by more than $20 billion — just as credit markets started to seize up, eventually making it nearly impossible for lenders to package student loans into securities and sell them to investors, a key source of liquidity. Since the fall of 2007, more than 180 lenders have exited from all or part of the federal student-loan program.
This week, Fitch Ratings downgraded student-loan company SLM Corp., better known as Sallie Mae, to BBB-, and called its outlook negative.
For the school year that ended in the spring, companies lent students at 4,465 schools a total of $74 billion, up 13% from $65.3 billion the prior year.
Sep/090
Maxine Waters: Press Should Probe Conservatives For Racist Views
Maxine Waters
The Hill: Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said that it’s not enough for African-Americans to levy allegations of racism against the right-leaning protesters, and that the media must look into their views.
“I want those people talked to; I want them interviewed,” Waters told the liberal Bill Press Radio show in a podcast. “I want journalists to be all over those rallies and the marches with the birthers and the teabaggers.”
Sep/090
Smoking Papers On Global Warming
Smoke Stacks
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, September 16, 2009 4:20 PM PT
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=337991812954735
Climate Change: A Treasury Department analysis says a cap-and-trade law could cost American families more than $1,700 a year. No wonder administrators tried to keep the study secret.
The House narrowly approved — by seven votes — the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in June over complaints that it would be an undue financial burden to American families. It passed after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi strode to the chamber floor and claimed that “this legislation means jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs. Let’s vote for jobs.”
Even some of the bill’s supporters had to roll their eyes at the assertion. It was a talking point intended to convince those who have not been paying attention to the legislation’s severe shortcomings, not wise and experienced lawmakers who know better.
Throughout the debate, the bill’s defenders said Waxman-Markey would cost “less than the price of a postage stamp per day,” a small price to pay, they declared, for saving the Earth from global warming. Their evidence: a Congressional Budget Office report that estimated the cost would be $175 per household a year.
But, as is often the case in Washington, it’s what they didn’t say that was more important.
While the House debated and eventually voted, filed away within the walls of the Treasury Department was an internal estimate that projected a cap-and-trade law would cost Americans up to $200 billion a year in new taxes. These taxes won’t be levied directly but will be paid when power providers and other carbon dioxide producers buy CO2 emission allowances from the federal government and then pass the costs on to customers — as will inevitably happen.
Overall, the costs would be “the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15%,” Declan McCullagh reports on his “Taking Liberties” blog on CBSnews.com.
“At the upper end of the administration’s estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year,” McCullagh wrote.
Had it not been for the efforts of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the analysis would have likely remained a guarded secret.
A handful of Treasury documents related to cap-and-trade, carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases were made public Tuesday, but only after CEI’s Christopher Horner used the Freedom of Information Act to force its disclosure.
“In short,” Horner wrote on National Review’s “Planet Gore” blog, the Treasury documents are “a candid snapshot of what they’re admitting to each other, while telling you a, ah, different story — to your face.”
But the government is allowing only so much candor.
The estimated cost of a cap-and-trade program in terms of higher energy prices has been, unsurprisingly, edited out of one of the Treasury documents. A thick black line follows the sentence that opens with “While such a program can yield environmental benefits that justify its costs, it will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order . . . .”
In two other documents, passages explaining the “significant costs and potential revenues” generated by “domestic policies to address climate change” were covered by black ink.
The only logical conclusion is that the figures are so staggeringly large that bureaucrats, and possibly elected officials, feel that they have to hide them from the public.
Treasury’s censors weren’t able to expunge everything, though.
A separate administration transition memo drafted two days after the election notes that the “Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1% of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation.”
In other words, under cap-and-trade, the economic costs of environmental regulation would double overnight.
Horner has said he’ll ask the courts to force the government to release the redacted references to increases in energy costs as well as other parts that have been blacked out.
We wish him the best. The country needs more people like him and fewer government officials who, for political purposes, conceal information that the public has a right to know.
Sep/091
No, Mr. President
Obama on 60 Minutes
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2009
Posted by William Kristol
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Weblogs/TWSFP/TWSFPView.asp#13172
In his 60 Minutes interview to be aired tonight, President Obama apparently says, “I intend to be president for a while and once this bill passes, I own it….I’m the one who’s going to be held responsible. So I have every incentive to get this right.”
No, Mr. President. It’s not about you. If legislation passes, you don’t own it.
We all own it. Any health care bill will become part of the U.S. Code, not simply an item on the Obama White House web site. We will all feel its effects. We are all responsible for the future of our country. Here the people rule.
Which is why it is wrong to jam through a 1,000+ page legislative act in such a rush that its defenders can’t even give a coherent account of what it will and won’t do, and in order to deal with a situation that the president himself acknowledged Wednesday night is not a crisis (“But we did not come here just to clean up crises. We came to build a future. So tonight, I return to speak to all of you about an issue that is central to that future — and that is the issue of health care.”).
The national debate on health care has just begun. Much of the popular anger of this past summer came from a feeling — a justified one — that if Obama has his way, we, the people, won’t have an opportunity to debate this issue as it deserves. The August recess seemed to be citizens’ one chance to force a reconsideration by their elected representatives before Obama succeeded in rushing the Congress to judgment.
This is a moment of truth for the two political parties.
Will enough Congressional Democrats refuse to be herded like sheep and stampeded like cattle? Will they do what is right, and insist, for the sake of the political health of the country, on an open and measured and deliberative process?
And if there are not enough such Democrats — if the Democratic party simply yields to Barack Obama and his assurance that, hey, he has every incentive to get it right, so everyone else should just get out of the way — if the Democratic Congress jams this legislation down the people’s throat — then the Republican party will have to say: We do not yield. We do not acquiesce. And we will take this issue to the country in 2010 and 2012, with the purpose of repealing this dangerous and damaging legislation.
Sep/091
U.S. government nervous about stimulus fraud, scams
ACORN
Thu Sep 10, 2009 6:25pm EDT
[source: http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN1029818020090910 ]
WASHINGTON, Sept 10 (Reuters) – As billions of dollars from the economic stimulus plan pour through the U.S. economy, members of Congress, the administration and regulatory agencies are increasingly worried about the risks of fraud.
Earl Devaney told Congress on Thursday the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board he chairs is investigating those who may have misappropriated stimulus money.
His board has “forwarded more than 100 matters to various IGs (inspector generals to ensure heightened scrutiny of specific procurements that board staff has identified as potentially problematic.
“We’ve got about nine cases in various U.S. attorneys offices,” he added. “I know from talking to them that they’re very interested in sending some very loud signals early.”
The Federal Trade Commission, too, has monitored scams where people have misrepresented their connections to the stimulus in order to convince people to hand over money or sensitive financial information.
It has gotten individuals to dismantle websites promising to help people get money from the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for household bills or, even, “leisure travel,” FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He described the individuals as con artists and hucksters.
“The commission is committed to using its law enforcement authority aggressively to bring these schemes to a halt, and to continue deploying public alerts and educational materials,” Leibowitz said.
The FTC cannot criminally prosecute scam artists, such as a telemarketing outfit that he said told Americans they were eligible for $25,000 grants and offered to sell them a $59 book on writing grants, the chairman said, but the agency does refer the cases to state attorneys general, he said.
But some legislators questioned if enough was being done.
“These funds must be disbursed quickly,” said Maine Senator Susan Collins, the highest ranking Republican on the committee. “Striking the right balance between speed and caution has been a challenging task.”
Collins said the Justice Department is training more than 10,000 federal, state and local officials to monitor stimulus contracts for collusion and bid-rigging.
The Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog, told the panel it is worried the auditing process the federal government requires states to use for stimulus-related programs may not catch misspending.
The “reporting deadline is too late to provide … results in time for the audited entity to take action on deficiencies,” J. Christopher Mihm, the GAO’s managing director of strategic issues, said.
But the Office of Management and Budget’s Deputy Director Robert Nabors, who is monitoring the stimulus dollars for President Barack Obama, said that as of Thursday his office had introduced a process for quicker auditing.
A website where funding recipients post how they have spent money and how many jobs their projects have created is running smoothly, Nabors said. He expects to release a report on how the stimulus has operated on Oct. 10.
That report will differ from the one released on Thursday by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers because it will only use the data in the system and will not rely on economic projections, he said. (Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Kenneth Barry)
Sep/091
Bartlett calls for probe of ACORN over videos
ACORN and the Census Bureau
Census Bureau cuts ties with group; Md. recording might be illegal.
By Justin Fenton | justin.fenton@baltsun.com
September 12, 2009
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bal-md.ci.acorn12sep12,0,196923.story
A Maryland congressman called for an investigation of ACORN after a second video surfaced that appeared to show its employees offering tax advice for criminal activities, but city prosecutors say the surreptitious recordings themselves might have violated state law.
Meanwhile, the Census Bureau said it was severing ties with the organization, which also has been the target of complaints about fraudulent voter registration.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has been under fire since Thursday, when a hidden-camera video shot in its Baltimore office surfaced. The video shows a man and woman posing as a pimp and a prostitute asking two apparently unwitting ACORN employees for advice on skirting tax and other laws.
Baltimore State’s Attorney Patricia A. Jessamy said allegations of tax fraud would fall under federal jurisdiction, but the apparently secret taping, or spreading it online, could represent a violation of the state’s two-party consent laws for recording conversations. A spokesman said it would take a formal complaint to trigger an investigation. Baltimore police said late Friday that no such complaint had been filed.
The two part-time ACORN employees were fired Thursday. On Friday, a second video surfaced depicting a similar scenario at the organization’s Washington office.
ACORN officials have condemned the videos as part of a smear campaign but acknowledged that the employees acted inappropriately. The organization said it was conducting an internal review.
Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, a Western Maryland Republican, said Congress should investigate the organization.
“Absolutely, there should be a congressional investigation since we now have a very apparent pattern of improper activities by ACORN,” he said. “However, it’s up to the Democratic majority to determine whether or not Congress will hold oversight hearings to justify any future taxpayer funding of ACORN.”
ACORN, which provides services to the needy, emerged as a target of Republicans during the 2008 presidential campaign, when it was accused of submitting fraudulent voter registration cards in several states. Although officially nonpartisan, the organization tends to serve communities that traditionally vote Democratic.
Earlier this week, police in Florida began arresting 11 ACORN canvassers on charges of falsifying hundreds of voter applications during a registration drive last year. Authorities were acting on a tip from the organization itself.
In splitting with ACORN, Census Director Robert Groves sought to tamp down GOP concerns that the organization would taint the 2010 head count.
“It is clear that ACORN’s affiliation with the 2010 census promotion has caused sufficient concern in the general public, has indeed become a distraction from our mission, and may even become a discouragement to public cooperation, negatively impacting 2010 census efforts,” Groves wrote in a letter obtained by the Associated Press.
A spokeswoman for Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler said his office had received many e-mails and phone calls from people concerned about the apparent promotion of tax fraud and child abuse shown in the Baltimore video, but she said that any potential violations appeared to fall out of its jurisdiction. Representatives of the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein and state Comptroller Peter Franchot said they knew about the videos but would not comment on whether they would investigate.
Maryland law requires all parties to consent to electronic recordings.
Joseph Murtha, a Lutherville attorney who represented Linda Tripp when she was charged with secretly recording conversations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, said prosecutors rarely pursue such charges. Charges against Tripp were dropped.
The key, Murtha said, is whether those being recorded have an expectation of privacy. Murtha said the Baltimore ACORN employees were acting on behalf of an agency and in their official capacity, with more than one person present and with a meeting room door open. “I think it would be a hard sell to prove that they had a legitimate expectation of privacy,” he said.
In the videos, posted on BigGovernment.com, a man and woman ask how to account for their income on tax forms and how to buy a house to use as a brothel.
The filmmakers, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, have said they were shocked that they were not turned away. ACORN officials say similar attempts were unsuccessful in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, where employees called police.
ACORN officials said Friday that they were “appalled and angry” to see the video of two Washington employees offering advice on how to operate an illegal enterprise and keep it hidden from the government. But they also stressed that the employees did not break any laws, saying “no loan documents were signed or submitted, no bank loans were arranged, no new business was established.”
Baltimore Sun reporter Paul West and the Associated Press contributed to this article.
Sep/090
Harry Reid: Bush Is The Worst President Ever
Meet the Press
[source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCk7b8sNL0Q ]
Dec/070
Beware of Cap and Trade Climate Bills
December 6, 2007
by Ben Lieberman
WebMemo #1723
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm1723.cfm
America’s Climate Security Act of 2007 (S. 2191), sponsored by Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA), is the latest and fastest-moving “cap and trade” bill introduced in Congress this year. All such climate change measures warrant careful scrutiny, as they would likely increase energy costs and do considerably more economic harm than environmental good.
A Costly Proposition
These measures would set a limit, or cap, on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use. The effect of such a cap would be to impose rationing of coal, oil, and natural gas on the American economy. Each covered utility, oil company, and manufacturing facility would be given allowances based on past emissions or some other formula. Those companies that emit less carbon dioxide than permitted by their allowances could sell the excess to those that do not; this is the trade part of cap and trade. Over time, the cap would be ratcheted down, requiring greater cuts in emissions.
Each proposal differs from the others on specifics: the stringency of the cap, the number and type of companies covered, the ground rules for allocating and trading allowances, and other details. S. 2191 is, in several respects, more stringent than other cap and trade bills. Its requirement that emissions decline to 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020–even in the face of a growing population and rising energy demand–sets a very difficult target.[1]
Measures like S. 2191 that target carbon emissions aggressively will be costlier than those that give the economy more time to adjust to the energy constraints. For example, over the long term, energy companies may find ways to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions underground, rather than emit them into the air, or switch to lower-emitting alternative energy sources as they are developed. But most experts see these advances as taking decades–much longer than the initial targets in S. 2191 allow. In fact, these targets may actually complicate the development of longer-term innovations, as they will divert resources to near-term fixes.
Carbon dioxide is the unavoidable byproduct of fossil fuel combustion, which currently provides 85 percent of America’s energy. Thus, it will be very costly to move away from this preferred energy source, and especially doing so as expeditiously as S. 2191 requires. A study by Charles River Associates puts the cost (in terms of reduced household spending per year) of S. 2191 at $800 to $1,300 per household by 2015, rising to $1,500 to $2,500 by 2050.[2] Electricity prices could jump by 36 to 65 percent by 2015 and 80 to 125 percent by 2050.[3] No analysis has been done on the impact of S. 2191 on gasoline prices, but an Environmental Protection Agency study of a less stringent cap and trade bill estimates impacts of 26 cents per gallon by 2030 and 68 cents by 2050.[4]
Even these cost projections may underestimate the true costs, because they assume no unpleasant surprises. But the world has already witnessed many unpleasant surprises with Europe’s ongoing efforts to impose a cap and trade program under the Kyoto Protocol, the international climate treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In fact, European efforts have racked up significant costs while failing to reduce emissions.[5] Nearly every European country participating has higher emissions today than when the treaty was first signed in 1997. Further, despite ongoing criticism of the United States from Kyoto parties for failing to ratify the treaty, emissions in many of these nations are actually rising faster than in the United States.
The European experience also shows the problem of cap and trade fraud.[6] None other than Enron’s Ken Lay was a strong supporter of carbon cap and trade when the idea was first floated in the 1990s, saying that it could “do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory initiative.” These carbon allowances that will be bought and sold have a value estimated at $50 billion to $300 billion annually, and the trade in them would be a huge new business.[7] Enron may be gone, but others ready to take advantage of cap and trade–often at public expense–are not.
The actual cost of S. 2191 is difficult to estimate–as America has never had to deal with such severe energy constraints–but would likely be very high.
A Regressive Tax
By limiting the supply of fossil fuels, S. 2191 would raise the cost of energy. For consumers, cap and trade means more expensive gasoline and electricity as well as net job losses in energy-dependent sectors. Senator Lieberman himself concedes costs into the hundreds of billions of dollars. And as the Congressional Budget Office has noted, such energy cost increases act as a regressive tax on the poor.[8]
Lost Jobs
The net job losses from S. 2191 are estimated by Charles River Associates to be 1.2 million to 2.3 million by 2015.[9] Some of these jobs will be lost for good, due to the impact of higher energy costs on economic activity. Others, chiefly in the manufacturing sector, will be sent overseas. In the very likely event that S. 2191 significantly raises domestic manufacturing costs and that developing nations refuse to impose similar restrictions, the American economy could experience a substantial outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to those nations with lower energy costs.
Little Environmental Gain
While the costs of aggressive cap and trade proposals are substantial, the environmental benefits are suspect. This is true even if one fully accepts the claim of man-made global warming. The most ambitious measure to date is the Kyoto Protocol, but even if the U.S. were a party to this treaty and the European nations and other signatories were in full compliance (most are unlikely to meet their targets), the treaty would reduce the Earth’s future temperature by an estimated 0.07 degrees Celsius by 2050–an amount too small even to verify.[10] S. 2191 would at best do only a little more.
Indeed, a number of economists, including many who are far from global warming skeptics, warn of overly aggressive cap and trade measures imposing costs exceeding the benefits.[11] In other words, the costs of implementing such measures would be higher than the value of the global warming damage that they would prevent.
The Slippery Slope
It is a near certainty that the first climate bill enacted will not be the last one. In fact, most major environmental organizations have already criticized S. 2191 and other pending global warming bills as inadequate, or as at best “a good first step.” The economic impacts of S. 2191, though substantial in their own right, could be a mere down payment toward costlier subsequent measures.
Conclusion
Cap and trade bills are nothing short of a government re-engineering of the American economy. And S. 2191, with its aggressive targets to reduce emissions from fossil fuel use, would put the nation on a path of serious economic harm not justified by any benefits.
Ben Lieberman is Senior Policy Analyst for Energy and the Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.