Jack Kingston

From ABC’s Jonathan Karl:

On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.� 

The section spends two pages defining which “states� would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years� have been declared a “major disaster area.� 

I am told the section applies to exactly one state:  Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.

In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be written with a single world:  Louisiana.  (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)

Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.

How much does it cost?  According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.

Click here to read the full article and text of the Landrieu language.

In case you missed it, Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel wrote this piece for today’s paper:

Help Wanted
The Democratic Party seeks a wildly optimistic individual to oversee a national jobs-creation program.

Wanted: National Jobs Czar

Employer: The Democratic Party

Job Type: Crisis Management/Complex Mathematics/Mental Health Professional

Start Date: Now. Like, Right Now.

Description: The Democratic Party seeks a wildly optimistic individual to oversee a national jobs-creation program. Jobs can be real, or not, so long as the public thinks the party is “doing something.” The National Jobs Creator will have at his disposal Congress to pass new “jobs legislation” (aka The It-Is-Not-Another-Stimulus Act of 2009).

The NJC will oversee a dynamic team whose side responsibilities include selling this to the public and saving our behinds in next year’s election. This is a potential career status position.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Heritage Foundation today released a memo detailing the negative impact of the Death Tax and the benefits of repealing it.  From the memo: 

The death tax is a drag on America’s family-owned businesses, destroys jobs, and lowers wages while raising little revenue. As such, Congress should repeal the estate tax once and for all to remove an unfair burden from the backs of American family-owned businesses and their workers…

Economic Benefits of Full Repeal

A recent study found that a full repeal of the death tax would create 1.5 million jobs. This is half the number of jobs President Obama claimed the $800 billion stimulus package would create–at one-fifth the price.

Additional benefits from full repeal of the estate tax include:

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  • Increasing small business capital by over $1.6 trillion;
  • Increasing the probability of hiring by 8.6 percent;
  • Increasing payrolls by 2.6 percent;
  • Expanding investment by 3 percent; and
  • Slashing the current jobless rate by 0.9 percent.

The death tax also impedes economic growth because it stands opposed to the principles of virtue, thrift, and savings that made America the strongest nation on earth. For those Americans who think that their estates may one day pay federal death taxes, the death tax increases their incentive to consume their wealth today rather than invest and make more money in the future. Instead of putting their money in the hands of entrepreneurs or investing more in their own economic endeavors, Americans get the unmistakable message to consume it now.

Kill the Death Tax

It is time for Congress to kill the death tax once and for all. Doing so would lift a tremendous weight off the shoulders of America’s family-owned businesses, create jobs for out-of-work Americans, and help the ailing economy.

To read the full memo, click here. 

“What is a better way to create jobs and fight unemployment — more government stimulus spending or more tax cuts?�

62%     More tax cuts
21%     More government stimulus spending
17%     Not sure

Rasmussen; conducted November 17-18, 2009; Survey of 1,000 Likely Voters Nationwide

Jack spoke on the House floor this evening and pointed out that, without a single vote from Congress, the Federal Reserve last year spent hundreds of billions of dollars bailing out firms like Bear Stearns and AIG. Now there’s a dangerous proposal in Congress that would give the Federal Reserve and the FDIC permanent bailout authority to keep bailing out firms without approval. This will endanger our fiscal policy, create an unfair competitive advantage for those firms dubbed “too big to fail” and will encourage risky behavior as financial firms realize “Uncle Sugar” is there to bail them out.  It’s time to stop the bailouts.

ABC News just posted a story revealing a Government Accountability Office report which shows continued discrepencies with the White House’s “created or saved” jobs claims.

The report shows that:

• 59,386 jobs were claimed to have been “created or saved” by projects on which no “stimulus” money was spent

• $965,000,000 was spent on 10,000 projects without creating a single job

As we reported yesterday, the White House’s $18 million website says they spent $6,217,770 in seven non-existent congressional districts to create only 1 job.

In case you missed it, the Wall Street Journal is out with this great editorial today:

The $1.9 Trillion Gimmick
The Democrats’ ‘doc fix’ for Medicare payments would shock Madoff.

What passes for a joke on Capitol Hill these days is that Bernie Madoff, given his experience managing Ponzi schemes, should be put in charge of the federal budget. Nancy Pelosi & Co. seem to have taken it as a serious suggestion.

Any day now, the House is expected to vote on a $210 billion fiscal swindle that will prevent automatic cuts in Medicare payments to doctors. The entitlement’s price controls are scheduled to fall by 21.5% in January and another 2% every year after that under a formula known as the sustainable growth rate, and eliminating the SGR was the price the American Medical Association demanded in return for its endorsement of the House health-care bill that passed earlier this month.

Read the rest of this entry »

“From what you know so far, which comes closest to your own view? 1. The economic stimulus package has already created a substantial number of new jobs in the U.S., OR 2. It will create a substantial number of new jobs but hasn’t done that yet, OR 3. It will not create a substantial number of new jobs.�

7%       Created jobs already
46%      Will create jobs eventually
42%      Will never create jobs
5%       Do not know

CBS News; conducted November 13-16, 2009; Survey of 1,167 Adults Nationwide

Earlier this week, the AP reported that jobs created by the Pelosi-Reid-Obama spending scheme in Georgia were overstated by more than 1,500.

Now those fake jobs have some company: fake congressional districts.

According to the Recovery.gov Web site, seven Georgia congressional districts that do not exist received millions of federal stimulus dollars. Click below for a screenshot of the website:

Recovery.Gov claims that 1 job was created in the seven phantom congressional districts with a total of $6,217,770 federal stimulus dollars spent.  What’s worse: that the districts don’t exist or that the federal government spent more than $6 million to create one job?

Want to learn more about the Administration’s phantom job debacle?  Visit:

• Recovery.Gov - Georgia Stimulus Recipients by Congressional District
• ABC News - Exclusive: Jobs ‘Saved or Created’ in Congressional Districts That Don’t Exist
• Oversight Republicans - Stimulus Watch
• Sunshine.GOP.Gov - Shining Light on Government Spending
• Onivia - Tracking Recovery

In case you missed it the New York Times reports today that some of the nation’s leading liberal groups (and President Obama’s biggest supporters) are now asking “Where are the jobs?”

From the article:

The organizations — including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group— will make clear that they believe the president’s $787 billion stimulus program has not gone far enough to fight unemployment.

Read the rest of this entry »

House Democrat’s Financial Stability Improvement Act would give the FDIC the authority to manage “systemically significantâ€� (i.e., politically significant) firms back to health, rather than allowing them to go into bankruptcy, even though bankruptcy is more efficient and does not expose the taxpayers to financial loss.  The Democrat proposal creates a permanent FDIC controlled bailout fund and would enable the FDIC to extend federal guarantees and loans to firms deemed to be systemically significant.  Below are ten reasons why such delegations would be catastrophic for taxpayers. 

10. Troubled Firms Will Get Bigger:  On August 28, 2009, a Washington Post article on the government’s efforts to bailout firms considered “too big to failâ€� stated, “When the credit crisis struck last year, federal regulators pumped tens of billions of dollars into the nation’s leading financial institutions because the banks were so big that officials feared their failure would ruin the entire financial system.  Today, the biggest of those banks are even bigger…[N]o consequence of the crisis alarms top regulators more than having banks that were already too big to fail grow even larger and more interconnected.â€�

9. Injects Politics Into the Resolution Process:  On October 27, 2009, a Wall Street Journal editorial on the evolution of TARP stated, “TARP quickly became a Treasury tool to save failing institutions without imposing discipline…TARP was then redirected well beyond the financial system into $80 billion in “investments” for auto companies. These may never be repaid but served as a lever to abuse creditors and favor auto unions.  TARP also bought preferred stock in struggling insurers Lincoln and Hartford, though insurance companies are not subject to bank runs and pose no “systemic risk.”

8. Lacks Transparency:  On March 17, 2009, the Wall Street Journal reported, “After months of government stonewalling, on Sunday night AIG officially acknowledged where most of the taxpayer funds have been going. Since September 16, AIG has sent $120 billion in cash, collateral and other payouts to banks [including Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch], municipal governments and other derivative counterparties around the world…�  AIG has received up to $180 billion in taxpayer funds.

7. Props Up Failed Firms:  According to a July 27, 2009 report on CNNMoney.com, “The first big government bailout of the financial crisis—the takeover of mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—is poised to be the most expensive and complicated to complete.  Since Congress essentially wrote a blank check to the Treasury Department in July 2008 to do what needed to be done to inject capital into the two firms, Fannie has received $34.2 billion of direct government support while Freddie has received $51.7 billion.� 

6. Throws Good Money After Bad:  On November 2, 2009, an article in Fortune stated, “CIT filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Sunday.  The New York based small business lender said all its common and preferred shares will be canceled, which will wipe out the $2.3 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program investment the Treasury Department made last December.�

5. Can’t Afford the Current Bailout:  On September 24, 2009, Bloomberg reported, “The FDIC’s insurance fund is going broke…â€�
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4. Lacks A Record of Success:  On November 13, 2009, The Washington Post reported, “The Federal Housing Administration’s cash reserves have shrunk to a level [.53 percent] far below what is required by law, and the agency could need taxpayer funding…â€�

3. Lacks Accountability:  According to the July 2009 Special Inspector General for TARP (SIGTARP) report, “The Federal Reserve has been one of the lead agencies responding to the financial crisis—increasing its balance sheet to more than $2 trillion to implement a wide range of programs designed to stimulate liquidity in financial markets, as well as several institution-specific interventions.�

2. Exposes Taxpayers:  In a July 20, 2009 Bloomberg article, Neil Barofsky, of SIGTARP stated, “U.S. taxpayers may be on the hook for as much as $23.7 trillion to bolster the economy and bail out financial companies…â€�

1. Creates a Purse Without Limits:  In recent testimony, Secretary Geithner refused to commit to limit the amount of taxpayer dollars that would be available to bail out large firms.

Courtesy House Republican Conference

When pitching Pelosi’s plan for the economy, Democrats produced a report claiming their plan would keep unemployment under 8%.

It’s clear now however, that Pelosi’s spending scheme (the so-called “stimulus”) has failed.  Late last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released their Employment Situation Summary showing that the unemployment rate soared to 10.2% in October.  The chart below, courtesy The Heritage Foundation, shows just how drasticly they got it wrong:

As you’ll remember, House Republicans proposed a plan that would create twice the jobs at half the price.  It’s time to repeal Pelosi’s Plan, pay down the debt, and empower America’s true economic drivers - small businesses and working families - to rebuild our economy.

Late Saturday night, when Speaker Pelosi wooed just two more votes than she needed for her takeover of health care she did so by allowing an amendment which would prohibit abortion under the plan.  Now that she’s cleared the hurdle, it appears the “Sneaker” Pelosi and her liberal friends are ready to turn back on their agreement.

The Washington Post has the full story:

…But abortion-rights supporters are vowing to strip the amendment out, as the focus turns to the Senate and the conference committee that would resolve differences between the two bills.

Although House liberals voted for the bill with the amendment to keep the process moving forward, Rep. Diana DeGette (Colo.) said she has collected more than 40 signatures from House Democrats vowing to oppose any final bill that includes the amendment — enough to block passage…

It’s clear the fight isn’t over.  We’ll keep fighting to defend the right to life and to make sure your tax dollars are not used to pay for abortions.

According to a memo written by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, the Department of Health and Human Services may have violated two prohibitions on federal agencies engaging in lobbying or propaganda campaigns in the spending bill that funded the efforts as well as a criminal statute prohibiting such communications.

Details from the memo can be found on Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley’s website by clicking here and Roll Call’s got the full story.

Seems strange that HHS would engage in the practice when it prohibited Medicare Advantage providers from communicating with their customers.

This story also sounds mighty familiar to a recent story posted here about the National Endowment for the Arts urging funded artists to create art that advances the President’s political goals.