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
The Tyranny of Health Insurance:
Obama Health Insurance
It all started with a question. If you are going to impose on every American that they must buy Health Insurance, then what is the penalty if they choose not to?
The answer is very disturbing!
A $25,000 fine or up to a year in jail!
Read more:
| September 25, 2009 Categories: Senate http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0909/Ensign_receives_handwritten_confirmation_.html?showall Ensign receives handwritten confirmation This doesn’t happen often enough. Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) received a handwritten note Thursday from Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staff Tom Barthold confirming the penalty for failing to pay the up to $1,900 fee for not buying health insurance. Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and could face up to a year in jail or a $25,000 penalty, Barthold wrote on JCT letterhead. He signed it “Sincerely, Thomas A. Barthold.” |
| By Carrie Budoff Brown 11:40 AM |
| September 24, 2009 Categories: Senate Flout the mandate penalty? Face the IRS Americans who fail to pay the penalty for not buying insurance would face legal action from the Internal Revenue Service, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. The remarks Thursday from the committee’s chief of staff, Thomas Barthold, seems to further weaken President Barack Obama’s contention last week that the individual mandate penalty, which could go as high as $1,900, is not a tax increase. Under questioning from Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), Barthold said the IRS would “take you to court and undertake normal collection proceedings.” Ensign pursued the line of questioning because he said a lot of Americans don’t believe the Constitution allows the government to mandate the purchase of insurance. “We could be subjecting those very people who conscientiously, because they believe in the U.S. Constitution, we could be subjecting them to fines or the interpretation of a judge, all the way up to imprisonment,” Ensign said. “That seems to me to be a problem.” Ensign’s argument , however, wasn’t persuasive to the committee — which rejected an amendment from Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) to eliminate the individual mandate. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) was the only Republican to vote with Democrats to preserve the mandate. |
| By Carrie Budoff Brown 04:04 PM |
Sep/091
Santorum may challenge ‘injurious’ Obama
Rick Santorum
September 15, 2009
By Ben Smith 12:59 PM
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0909/Santorum_may_challenge_injurious_Obama.html
Rick Santorum affirmed on an RNC conference call — aimed at attacking Arlen Specter — that he’s considering a run for president in 2012 — because, he said, the Obama presidency is “injurious to America.”
“The dynamic has changed,” Santorum said. “A lot of folks who might not have thought about running against an incumbent president” are now considering it.
He cited Obama’s lower poll numbers and his failure to “transform” and unify the country.
“A lot of people are going to take a look and see wht they can do to try to confront this presidency, which many of us — as you’re seeing from the tea parties and the like — which many of us believe is injurious to America,” Santorum said, saying the 2012 race is “something that I think I would consider.”
Santorum also elaborated on his opposition to the use of reconciliation to pass health care legislation; the parliamentary procedure was used, with his support, in the Bush years to pass the controversial 2003 tax cuts and a range of other measures, including opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
Santorum called ANWR drilling “fairly minor” in its impact on the land and on the economy
“You’re talking about drilling holes, as opposed to rejiggering and reconstructing the entire health care system of this country,” the former Pennsylvania senator said.
“A tax bill is by definition a revenue bill – it affects the budget. That’s what reconciliation is for,” he said.
“This is a major policy initiative in an area that goes beyond the federal government’s balance sheets — that to me makes it an abomination.”
He warned that the procedure would turn the bill into a “Rube Goldberg machine.”
UPDATE: A Democrat notes that Santorum didn’t always consider ANWR a minor matter of a few holes: “I believe that ANWR has the potential to play a significant role in reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and I support exploring this area in a safe and environmentally sound way,” he wrote in 2006.
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/090
Harry Reid: Bush Is The Worst President Ever
Meet the Press
[source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCk7b8sNL0Q ]
Oct/080
Clinton Urges 401(k)s, Matching Funds
Hillary Clinton
my coments = colorText
Oct 9 04:00 PM US/Eastern
By NEDRA PICKLER
Associated Press Writer
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8S5TSGG0&show_article=1
WEBSTER CITY, Iowa (AP) -Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed tax cuts of up to $1,000 a year on Tuesday to encourage millions of working-age families to open personal 401 (K) retirement accounts.
The New York senator said the program would be paid for through higher estate taxes.
Yep, that’s what Americans want, higher taxes.
At the same time, Clinton said she has given up another idea for a savings incentive—giving every baby born in the United States a $5,000 account to pay for college or a first home.
Her infamous quote “I have a million ideas, we just can’t afford them all.”
Instead, she said, her plan for what she called “American Retirement Accounts” will provide “universal access to a generous 401(K) for all Americans.”
anyone heard of a Roth IRA?
She outlined a program in which the government would provide a “matching refundable tax credit—dollar for dollar—for the first $1,000 of savings done by every married couple making up to $60,000 a year.”
Families with incomes of up to $100,000 would receive a smaller tax break to spur them to contribute to a personal 401(K).
The graduated income tax, taken from the Communist Manifesto…
“This means tens of millions of middle-class families will get matching tax cuts of up to $500 and $1,000 to help them build a nest egg for retirement,” said a fact sheet distributed by the campaign.
Higher income earners who don’t have employer-sponsored plans could participate, but they would not receive tax breaks and the contributions they make would count against the IRA contribution limit.
Clinton proposed freezing the estate tax at projected 2009 levels to pay for the tax cuts. Her campaign said that would mean estates of more than $7 million per couple would be subject to taxation.
At a cost of $20 billion-$25 billion a year, the plan is Clinton’s largest domestic proposal other than her plan for universal health insurance.
Wow- just a few billion a year. I’m sure that’s a low estimate.
Clinton first mentioned a so-called “baby bond” last month in an appearance before the Congressional Black Caucus, saying it was just an idea and not a policy proposal. The idea was criticized by Republicans, and she told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Tuesday that it’s off the table.
The campaign of her Democratic rival John Edwards suggested it was an example of Clinton setting her positions by polls. “Apparently, new polling data seems to have pressured the Clinton campaign to throw out the baby bond with the bathwater,” said Edwards spokesman Chris Kofinis.
Clinton’s campaign said that for every $7 million estate that gets taxed, at least 5,000 families would receive the matching funds.
The retirement account proposal would be designed for adults of working age and not open to children, but there is no requirement that people work to participate. The matching funds would come in the form of a refundable tax credit that would be deposited into the 401(k) plan.
She said she would encourage employers to have direct deposit from paychecks into the accounts.
Clinton said less than half the families in the United States have retirement savings accounts and those who have them aren’t saving enough. She said she often meets people working even into their early 80s because they don’t have enough savings.
“We don’t have much of a nest egg to fall back on,” she said.
The point is that if anyone in America wants a retirement account they can get one, and I’m sure the private accounts will be managed much better than government run ones. This is not, and never should be the responsibility of the government. Tax us less and we can save more!