o'spend - o'who? stimuli bankrupting America

New & Notable Legislation

"The ink is barely dry on the pay-as-you-go law, and
Democrats are seeking to bypass it to enact parts of their job-creation agenda," reports The Hill. We're shocked -- shocked! Democrats are working to classify unemployment insurance and COBRA health benefits as emergency spending that isn't subject to the "paygo" rules. Paygo, which Obama signed into law on Feb. 12, requires that some new spending (the exemption list is long) be offset by spending cuts elsewhere or tax increases.

After devising a $787 billion "stimulus" plan that didn't curb unemployment and -- according to a New York Times/CBS poll -- didn't convince the public that it "created or saved" jobs, it goes without saying that Democrats are keen on lowering expectations on the new $154 billion "jobs" bill which passed the House. The Senate has a smaller measure which spends "only" $15 billion.

The House bill promises job creation through such measures as providing aid to the states, extending unemployment benefits, and infrastructure improvements. Yet the original stimulus included many of these same programs and bailouts, leading to the logical question: Why try something again when it didn't work the first time? Well, that's why this is called a jobs bill, not a stimulus. Clearly, congressional Democrats hope the jobs this bill saves will be their own in November.

Count on Government Waste
If you thought spending upwards of $2.5 million on advertising during the Super Bowl to promote the upcoming census was a waste of money, that's just the tip of the iceberg. An audit of last fall's address canvassing portion of the census, in which workers fixed the GPS coordinates of households in preparation for this spring's count, found that it cost almost 25 percent more than the original estimate of $356 million. The extra $88 million in expenses found during the audit are an obvious concern since the bulk of the work is yet to be done. Among the excuses given were workers who were paid for the training but quit before the work actually began and others who fudged their mileage reimbursements to pad their paychecks.

The census is mandated by the Constitution to determine proportional representation through an accurate count of the populace, but in more recent times states have pushed hard for the largest possible compliance rate in order to ensure they receive "their share" from the federal trough. Consequently, the census questions become quite a bit more intrusive than "How many people live at this residence?" According to the Census Bureau, the count determines the fate of over $400 billion in federal funding. That's where the real fraud will begin.

Constitution Society: Founding Documents	Online Books	History Links	Quotations: American Values
TimeLine of: the Magna Carta	Declaration of Arbroath	History of: The US Bill of Rights	Constitution + more Amendments