According to The Hill today, “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) signaled on Tuesday that he and other Senate Democrats are looking to advance President Obama’s proposal to spend $35 billion to shore up jobs for teachers, police and firefighters in the coming weeks. Reid, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and other Senate Democrats on Monday introduced the Teachers and First Responders Act, which mirrors the plan Obama has been touting in a bid to get Congress to pass pieces of his American Jobs Act. Under the proposal, $30 billion would be used to shore up 400,000 teacher jobs, and another $5 billion would go for thousands of police and firefighter jobs. Reid said Tuesday that the bill, S. 1723, is ‘fully paid for,’ but said rather than cuts to other federal programs, it would raise taxes on the wealthy.”
But, as Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell explained in a floor speech this morning, these plans from Democrats sound awfully familiar. “[T]his isn’t the first time President Obama’s demanded that Congresses pass what he calls a ‘jobs bill,’” Leader McConnell said. “But if this one were to pass, and it worked as advertised, then it would be the first one that did. Again and again, the President’s response to America’s ongoing jobs crisis has been to insist that Congress pass some urgent piece of legislation right away, or an even worse calamity would result. Those bills were supposed to create jobs and prevent layoffs too. But he keeps coming back for more. I guess the President is counting on the American people to forget that part. He’s counting on us to forget about the other stimulus legislation he’s already signed into law, and that it’s failed to live up to the hype every time.”
Indeed, last year Democrats passed a $26 billion state bailout that they claimed could save something like 300,000 jobs. Former White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said at the time that it would “ensure that 160,000-plus teachers didn’t get fired as a result of bad state budgets.” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) boasted, “The measure we are considering today… will save more than 100,000 jobs in schools across America.” And the third ranking Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), said, “There is no doubt about it, if we fail to pass this bill, hundreds of thousands of teachers and firefighters will lose their jobs.”
And in 2009, President Obama promised of his nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill, “It’s a plan that will save or create up to four million jobs over the next two years … And the jobs of firefighters, teachers, nurses, and police officers that would otherwise be eliminated if we don’t provide states with some relief.” Obama said because of the stimulus, “We’ve created and saved, as you said, Joe, at least 150,000 jobs – jobs of teachers and nurses and firefighters and police officers.”
Yet here majority Senate Democrats and the president are, demanding passage of yet another multi-billion bailout to save the jobs of teachers and others they said would be saved by their previous two spending bills. Just this morning, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said, “Nationwide, state and local budget cuts would cost as many as 280,000 teacher jobs next year—unless we do something about that. This teachers and first responders legislation will invest $30 billion to create or save nearly 400,000 teacher jobs.”
But even Democrats aren’t completely sold on Democrats’ latest bailout. Politico reported last night, “Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jon Tester of Montana were the only two Democrats who voted last week to filibuster President Barack Obama’s $447 billion American Jobs Act. And they’re not yet sold on their party’s latest idea: Breaking off $35 billion from that plan for states and localities to hire teachers and first-responders. ‘If I didn’t think much of it on the one thing, you’ve got to assume that I won’t think much of it for something else,’ Nelson told POLITICO on Monday evening. ‘I don’t think you increase taxes for new spending.’ Tester said he wasn’t as concerned about the 0.5 percent surtax on families making more than $1 million to pay for the $35 billion plan. But he was unsure whether the new spending proposals would actually create more jobs.” And according to a Politico report today, “Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) says President Obama’s new plan to pass his jobs acts in “bite-size” pieces is not going to work. ‘When you look at the president’s jobs act, even if you break it into bite-size pieces, it’s spending money we don’t have, and you’ve got to raise taxes to pay for it, and to me, all that just makes the job of the debt reduction committee … even harder,’ Lieberman said on Fox News Tuesday morning.”
The House Committee on Small Business chaired by Rep. Sam Graves held a hearing titled LightSquared: The Impact to Small Business GPS Users. The purpose of the hearing was to examine the impact on small businesses that may result from LightSquared’s use of its spectrum to provide broadband service near the Global Positioning System (GPS). Small businesses, including farmers, construction contractors, surveyors, and the general aviation industry, rely on the accuracy of GPS. Potential interference with GPS raises significant concerns to these small businesses.
The company found itself in a political controversy last month when sources said an Air Force general was pressured to change prepared testimony to favor LightSquared, which is backed by Democratic donor Philip Falcone. The general did not end up changing the testimony and went on to tell a House panel that LightSquared signals would interfere with GPS receivers based on testing.
More and more often news stores are showing the impact of costly regulations imposed on the economy by the Obama administration. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported, “Smart Papers, the Hamilton-based paper maker, said last Thursday it has begun winding down operations while it seeks a potential buyer for all or part of its nearly 120-year-old paper business. The company, which is the last North American manufacturer of premium coated printing papers used for everything from packaging to corporate reports, employs about 200. Competition from Asia, rising costs of raw materials and uncertainty surrounding new federal pollution rules contributed to the decision, said Tim Needham, Smart Papers’ chairman.”
The Enquirer notes, “[Needham] said the rapid expansion of low-priced Asian coated paper manufacturing, increased costs of raw materials, and new federal pollution rules were also factors. Those new rules, Needham suggested, could make a sale more difficult. The Environmental Protection Agency rules, known as the boiler MACT – maximum achievable control technology – aim to reduce hazardous air pollutants caused by industrial boilers. The EPA issued the rule in March under a court-ordered deadline, and has said it plans to reconsider those rules by April 12. . . . But as written today, Needham said the rules would require his company to essentially replace its existing boilers. . . . Beyond the cost of new boilers, Needham said, current boiler technology doesn’t exist to comply with the EPA standards.”
It’s these kinds of job-killing regulations that Republicans are proposing legislation to block. Senate Republicans, led by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), have introduced the Jobs Through Growth Act which tries to remove the government-imposed obstacles to job creation generated by the Obama administration. The Senate Republican jobs plan “includes a moratorium on new regulations, and also a new process for Congressional approval of regulations through the REINS Act (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny). The plan repeals burdensome regulations like greenhouse gas emissions and farm dust requirements.”
House Republicans passed a bill to block the costly EPA regulations that will shutter businesses like Ohio-based Smart Papers. According to Bloomberg News, “The measure was approved 275-142 yesterday as Republicans push to curtail Environmental Protection Agency regulations they say are harming the economy. . . . The House vote sends ‘a strong message of the importance of providing EPA with additional time to issue achievable standards,’ Thomas Ryan, a spokesman for Memphis, Tennessee- based International Paper Co., the world’s largest paper and pulp producer, said in an e-mail before the vote.”
As Sen. Paul said, “The president’s jobs plan was voted down this week by members of both parties. We simply cannot look to the failed policies of the last two years for an example of how to grow our economy and create jobs. More government spending and excessive regulation are the problem not the solution. We have spent too long increasing the tax and regulatory burdens on job creators, instead of allowing them to operate more freely and create more jobs.”
The AP reported Saturday, “The Obama administration’s signature health overhaul law, under relentless assault by Republicans, has suffered its first major casualty — a long-term care insurance plan dogged from the beginning by doubts over its financial solvency. The program became the first casualty in the political and policy wars over the health care law. It had been expected to launch in 2013.”
Politico added, “HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Friday that the department is calling for a halt to the implementation of the CLASS Act — a stunning end to the financially troubled long-term care insurance program and a major setback to the health care reform law.”
And The Hill notes, “CLASS is by far the biggest piece of healthcare reform to meet its end, and also the first to collapse entirely on its own. Republicans successfully repealed one much smaller provision, and the individual mandate could be struck down by the Supreme Court. But HHS officials acknowledged that CLASS fell apart simply because it was too flawed to salvage.”
In an editorial, The Wall Street Journal blasts Democrats for including the unsustainable program in the first place: “Democrats engineered the program known by the acronym Class with front-loaded premiums and back-loaded benefits so that on paper it threw off a lot of revenue early on but then bankrupted itself later. This design made it possible for the Congressional Budget Office to score the program as a money-raiser during its first decade and thus make ObamaCare look like it reduced the deficit. . . . HHS’s own experts were warning Democrats all along that Class was a fiscal time bomb, so including it in the bill was a special act of fiscal corruption.”
And yet Democrats touted the CLASS program when they jammed Obamacare though the Senate in December 2009. Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) said at the time, “I know these bills are big, well more than 800 pages, but this section on the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act , the so-called CLASS Act, is a breakthrough–I think to be understated….” And Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) claimed, “[W]e get a lot of bangs for the buck, as one might say, with the CLASS Act that we have in this bill.”
Responding to Republican warnings about the CLASS Act, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said, “Certain colleagues on the other side of the aisle have argued that the CLASS plan would lead to a financially unstable entitlement program and would rapidly increase the Federal deficit. That is simply not accurate.” And he boasted, “The CLASS plan is a win-win for reducing costs in our health care system and protecting Americans who require long-term care.”
* $17 million pledged to a Moberly company for a project that has since turned out to be a scam, run by a California man with a history of financial troubles, that seeks to exploit a loophole in immigration law and allow wealthy Chinese investors a chance to purchase American citizenship.
Senator Jim Talent, Vice Chairman, The WMD Center, discusses “Talking Biosecurity with the Public” at a special symposium, Charting the Future of Biosecurity: Ten Years after the Anthrax Attacks, held October 4, 2011, in Washington, DC.
After ignoring or avoiding the stimulus bill President Obama has been campaigning around the country for the last few weeks, Senate Democrats are finally holding a vote this afternoon on it. Of course, the vote is expected to fail, and despite Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) predictions on MSNBC this morning that the “overwhelming majority of Democrats” will vote for it, there are serious questions as to whether a majority of Democrat senators will support the bill.
As the AP reports today, “Democratic unanimity is not assured. Moderates like Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. — both are up for re-election next year in states where Obama figures to lose — may abandon their party, even as oil-state Democrats have been assuaged by a decision to get rid of an Obama proposal to have oil companies give up tax breaks. ‘We’re likely to lose two, three, four Democrats,’ Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second ranking Democrat in the Senate, told Chicago’s WTTW-TV Monday.”
And The Hill writes, “Democratic leaders in the Senate are scrambling to avoid defections on President Obama’s jobs package, which appears headed for defeat on Tuesday. A lack of Democratic unity on the president’s bill would be embarrassing for the White House, which has been scolding House Republicans for refusing to vote on the measure.”
Indeed, The Hill points out, “Despite the changes, the legislation still does not enjoy the support of all 53 senators who caucus with the Democrats. A handful of Democrats are undecided or leaning no on the bill. Democrats who will vote no or are leaning no include Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Jon Tester (Mont.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.), who all hail from red states and are up for reelection next year. . . . [Sen. Joe] Lieberman [ID-CT] opposes the bill because the 5.6 percent surtax on millionaires is being used for new spending instead of reducing the deficit, and will vote against the measure on final passage, his office said. . . . The office of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Monday that he is undecided. ‘He wants to see the whole thing — including amendments — before he decides whether he’ll vote for it,’ an aide said. . . . Tester is officially against the bill. He supports an overhaul of the tax code rather than the changes in the bill and is concerned that the payroll tax cuts would weaken Social Security. . . . Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) remained officially undecided on the bill as of Monday, his office said. Webb has a problem with the millionaire’s surtax because it is a tax increase on ordinary earned income. He would prefer closing loopholes and increasing taxes on capital gains. Nelson has spoken disparagingly of Obama’s proposal, but his office said Monday that Nelson has not decided yet how he will vote on it and is still studying the bill. Manchin has been critical of the legislation, though he, too, has not said how he will vote. His office did not respond to questions Monday.”
Meanwhile, jobs groups have declared their opposition to the new surtax Democrat Senate leaders added to the stimulus bill. In a letter to senators last week, a group that includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the
National Association of Manufacturers, the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, and the Associated General Contractors, wrote, “the burden of the proposed tax increases would fall disproportionately on the income of America’s small and mid-sized businesses who pay taxes at individual rates. . . . the Obama Administration’s own data demonstrates that 4 out of 5 of the taxpayers who will face this surtax are business owners – and thus, increasing the tax burden on these business owners will reduce the amount of capital that they would otherwise have available to invest in their company or hire additional workers.”
“In sum,” the jobs groups write, “the Senate legislation would pay for the President’s Jobs Bill by raising tax rates on hundreds of thousands of business owners, a job killing tax hike to pay for a bill purported to strive for job creation.”
Legislators participating were Sen. Kevin Engler (R-Farmington), Sen. Maria Chappelle Nadal (D-University City) and Sen. Jim Lembke (R-St. Louis County)
