Americans now agree that the stimulus package signed into law earlier this year has not achieved its intended effects, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) claimed Monday.
Pushing back against a possible second stimulus bill, Cantor asserted that the Obama administration-backed first $787 billion stimulus has not worked, and insisted that characterization has now become consensus.
"I think we all need to recognize that the first attempt of the stimulus bill did not stimulate the economy," Cantor said in a conference call sponsored by the Republican National Committee (RNC). "I think we all agree on that now."
"We hear today now that there is talk in the administration and elsewhere that perhaps we should go on with a 'Stimulus II,'" the second-ranking House Republican added. "Any mention of a Stimulus II implies that there was a Stimulus I that did anything to provide jobs and get the economy going again."
Cantor urged a recommitment of existing, unspent stimulus dollars, and called for leaders in Congress to "take off [their] partisan hats" to work toward a better package.
Democrats are using a "voodoo economics" to conclude that healthcare reform will cost only $611 billion over the next 10 years, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) alleged Monday.
Barrasso, a physician who's emerged as a chief Republican critic of Democratic-led efforts to reform healthcare, slammed claims by Senate Democrats that their revised bill to reform healthcare and create a public (or "government-run") option for consumers would cost less than initial estimates put forth by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
"Well, it's astonishing, whether they're using their magical calculator or voodoo economics, whatever you want to call it," Barrasso said during an appearance on Fox News. "It's absolutely misleading to the American people."
Barrasso's claim actually puts him in the odd position of using a slogan, "voodoo economics," that was crafted by then-Republican presidential candidate George H.W. Bush to criticize the free market economic policies of Ronald Reagan.
Barrasso several times criticized the $611 billion price tag as "misleading." The revised healthcare bill crafted by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee has not been scored by the CBO.
Barrasso argued that the healthcare bill would not emerge from the Senate by leadership's self-imposed deadline before the August recess.
"I got to tell you, they are more interested in getting anything passed than finding the plan that will work, and to try to mislead the American people," the Wyoming lawmaker asserted.
He also took a general shot at President Obama, who has made healthcare reform one of his top priority of his nascent administration.
"I think anybody who believes all the president's campaign promises are going to absolutely be doomed to disappointment when this comes through, if we get something passed," Barrasso said.
"The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy. The figures we worked off of in January were the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there," Biden said in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "There was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited. Now, that doesn't -- I'm not -- it's now our responsibility."
"We misread how bad the economy was, but we are now only about 120 days into the recovery package," Biden said. "The truth of the matter was, no one anticipated, no one expected that that recovery package would in fact be in a position at this point of having to distribute the bulk of money." [emphasis added]
Three times Biden repeated that the administration misread the economy. That's a stark departure from the administration's standard line. Compare Biden's remarks to what Obama said last week:
Though "we have successfully stabilized the financial markets" and have "started to see some stabilization on housing," Obama acknowledged that "we are still seeing is too many jobs lost."
Both Biden and Obama acknowledge that the unemployment rate is too high, but only Biden admitted the administration made a mistake. Expect every Republican to seize on Biden's remarks in the coming weeks.
If and when the White House proposes a second stimulus, the GOP now has an easy response: Democrats only need a second stimulus because, as Biden admitted, they screwed up the first one.
Brian Deese, the White House Car Czar, may know a ton about the domestic auto industry, but he didn't learn it from driving a Chevy....or a Ford, or a Chrysler, for that matter.
Deese reportedly drives an "old, old, old silver Honda Civic two-door hatchback."
Deese, the 31-year-old tour de force behind President Obama's Auto Task Force, has been seen tooling around town in a car that might make board members of General Motors shudder: He drives a Honda, whose manufacturer is based in Japan.
[snip]
Meg Reilly, a Treasury Department spokeswoman who speaks on behalf of Deese, joked to the Sleuth, "Considering the amount of time he spends in his office, Brian may start saving gas money by sleeping in the back of his 11-year-old Honda full time."
The WaPo concludes: "[B]elieve us, American autoworkers will care" that Deese drives a foreign car. Really? Sort of ironic, I agree, but I doubt it's a big deal.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) released a web video Thursday in which the Ohio Republican lightheartedly releases hounds to find jobs Boehner asserts were not created by President Obama's stimulus package earlier this year.
The video, released at the height of the Fourth of July recess, comes as the Labor Department released its latest unemployment numbers, showing the economy losing 467,000 jobs in June, raising the unemployment rate to 9.5 percent.
"This is a lighthearted web video, but the underlying point is no laughing matter," Boehner said in a statement about the video. "Americans were promised the 'stimulus' would keep the unemployment rate from going above eight percent. It's now it's skyrocketing above nine percent. Where are the jobs?"
Republicans have harped on the stimulus, which they unanimously opposed in the House earlier this year, as having been ineffectual as some economic indicators have remained stagnant.
Watch Boehner's video, which does its best Mr. Burnsimpression with hound "Ellie Mae," below. (Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) provides the voice of the southern drawled narrator.)
Congress shouldn't be in any rush to pass through some reforms of the financial sector, Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) argued Wednesday.
Kanjorski, chairman of the subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and GSEs, said during an apperance on CNBC that Congress should favor doing the reforms well over doing them quickly.
"Let's take our time. Let's analyze the implications and the effects of the laws and regulations," Kanjorski asserted. "And if it takes three more months or six months, what does it matter? Get it done as correct as possible."
Kanjorski was specifically referring to one key project of his, expanding whistleblower protections for those who alert federal regulators to financial malfeasance.
Congressional leaders signaled yesterday that they would take up draft legislation to establish a consumer financial protection agency introduced by the Obama administration quickly. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said he hoped to move on the legislation before the August recess.
"I think we have to step back and say, 'Look, rather than running and try to get something done so we can all say this will never happen again and we've solved the problem' -- that's nonsense," Kanjorski said.
The Treasury Department released a copy of proposed legislation on Tuesday to establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency to oversee different elements of the American financial services sector.
The legislation would establish a "National Bank Supervisor" and an independent agency within the executive branch, headed by a presidential nominee.
According to the legislation, the new agency would "seek to promote transparency, simplicity, fairness, accountability, and access in the market for consumer financial products or services" and be able to craft new regulations to carry out that mandate.
The legislation, promised by President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, is a core part of the administration's initiative to overhaul U.S. financial regulations. Geithner had signaled last week that legislation to centralize consumer protection was forthcoming.
Still, the proposed consumer protection "czar" has been the core of business groups' opposition to elements of Obama's regulatory overhaul, with those groups -- joined by some conservative Republicans in Congress -- worrying that the new agency would only add to bureaucracy instead of streamlining regulation.
The Obama administration has known all along that the economic stimulus plan for which it had pushed would not have much of an effect for at least half a year, one of the administration's top economic advisers said Sunday.
"We always knew we were not going to get all that much fiscal impact during the first five to six months," Council of Economic Advisers Chairwoman Christina Romer told the Financial Times. "The big impact starts to hit from about now onwards."
But while the administration had never said it expected an immediate economic recovery due to the stimulus, it had often talked up the immediate relief the $787 billion package would provide. Indeed, President Obama and many of his advisers had talked up the "shovel-ready" projects in the bill just waiting for the money to be allotted.
National Economic Council (NEC) Chairman Lawrence Summers said in February consumers would see the effects of the stimulus "almost immediately," and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Directer Peter Orszag said the impact of the stimulus could be seen within "weeks to months."
Romer defended that stimulus amidst an unemployment rate that's slid steadily higher, and other persistently negative economic indicators.
"It should make a material contribution to growth in the third quarter," Romer said, adding that stimulus spending would "ramp up strongly through the summer and the fall."
The Cleveland Plain-Dealer just ruined some lawmakers' weekends.
In a report published last night, the Plain-Dealer flagged a number of worrisome stock transactions made by members of Congress--including some on House Financial Services Committee--during the bailout frenzy late last year.
The instances cited by the Plain-Dealer certainly do seem to raise some question. For example:
Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, a Florida Republican, bought Citigroup stock valued between $1,001 and $15,000 on Oct. 2, the day before the House passed the financial rescue bill and President George W. Bush signed it into law, records show. She opposed the bill.
Eleven days later, she bought $1,001 to $15,000 worth of Bank of America stock. It was on the same day that then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told leading banks that he expected them to accept billions in bailout money to prevent a financial meltdown.
Brown-Waite was on the Financial Services committee at the time. Her office refused to comment for the piece.
And there's more:
[Rep. Charlie] Wilson, a Democrat from the eastern Ohio town of Bridgeport, sold between $15,001 and $50,000 worth of Huntington Bancshares stock on Nov. 14, the same day Huntington got $1.4 billion in bailout money from the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, records show. Wilson's transactions over the course of last autumn also included Bank of America and BB&T, both beneficiaries of the bank rescue program that Treasury implemented after congressional passage.
Wilson's spokeswoman said the congressman did not personally pick these trades because he leaves day-to-day investment decisions to a money manager who uses a proprietary model in selecting securities to buy or sell.
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) used the same defense as Wilson--that she is not in control of her transactions--when the Plain-Dealer questioned her about buying $2,275 of JP Morgan stock while Congress was crafting a bailout for the company.
The reports also cites transactions by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.), and Rep. Judith Biggert (R-Ill.)
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