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Typed in bold because I'm old.. heh heh heh.
A comment I found by a US Navy Disabled Veteran - Retired
Two stories came out the past weeks that deserve to be thought of as one. These two by themselves have created the high degree of frustration as seen by the President Obama Administration. Quoting from Ezra Klein from the Washington Post article.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/10/when_good_policies_look_bad.html
“First, Jackie Calmes reports on TARP, which is set to expire Sunday. Ask your average voter how much the bailout cost, and they'll probably tell you $700 billion. Wrong. It now looks like taxpayers are going to lose either very little or nothing -- and there's a good chance they'll actually make some money. Sen. Bob Bennett, the Utah Republican who lost his primary in large part because he voted for the bill, has the best take. “My career is over,” he told Calmes, “but I do hope that we can get the word out that TARP, number one, did save the world from a financial meltdown and, number two, did so in a manner that, I believe, won’t cost the taxpayer anything.”
Comment: There is no doubt that TARP did work and work well. To date it has created a profit of 8% and helped avoid this country from going into a depression that we have not seen since the “Great Depression”. True that the TARP Bill was signed into law by President Bush, remember John McCain leaving the campaign trail to vote for this bill? But, the actual Bill was implemented by the Obama Administration. I have seen people claim that no credit should be given to President Obama because it was already a law. I completely disagree with that false hood. The House controls the purse strings and very well could have unfunded the bill just like Boehner is vowing to do to the Health Care Reform Bill and Financial Reform Bill. It was under the direction of the Obama Administration that TARP performed as well as it did. So yes, most definitely President Obama did avoid a major depression.
The Stimulus:
“Second, Lori Montgomery reports on various assessments, including a White House report, showing that the stimulus spent its money at about the speed it promised, generating -- at least according to the CBO -- about the numbers of jobs it promised, and did so with remarkably little waste, fraud and abuse. "Certainly, the fraud and waste element has been smaller than I think anything anybody anticipated," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group. "You can certainly challenge some projects as questionable economically. But there haven't been the examples of outright fraud where the money is essentially lining somebody's pocket."
“Mitch McConnell says that “by any measurable index, the stimulus package has been a failure," and then brags about stimulus projects in his back yard, is just politics”.
Comment: First, Sen. McConnell just refuses to pay credit where credit is due. This was one of the first signs that McConnell was going to do everything he could to make President Obama a one term President.
The Stimulus Worked. It saved (according to CBO and leading economists both republican and democrats) about 1.4 Million to 3.5 Million Jobs and created currently over 600,000 new private sector jobs. If these jobs had not been saved and created the unemployment rate would be closer to 12% than the current 9.6%. President Obama never said he guaranteed the unemployment rate would be 8%. First, the unemployment rate was at 7.6% when he was sworn into office. It makes no sense to guarantee 8%. The initial projections were based on limited data available at the time and they were filled with a dozen of caveats.
Below is a link to the 111th Congress report on the Stimulus. It lists all 114 Republicans that opposed the Stimulus but took the money anyway. Some even asked for more which raises the question if the Bill was so bad why did they want more? In most cases the republicans took the money, went to ribbon cutting ceremonies and ground breakers to take credit for these Stimulus Dollars. Again it raises the question if this Bill was so bad why did they (the republicans) take the credit for the funds even though there was no credit for them to have? It is called Hypocrisy, and the republicans will do anything and everything, even outright lie, to get elected.
http://thinkprogress.org/touting-recovery-opposed/
The “Special interest Groups” are still not disclosing who is buying America (Foreign or Domestic). The Republicans are now trying to change the interest from the corruption of the Supreme Court with the “Citizens United” decision to so called election fraud, which has been debunked already. Angle’s is complaining that the election is being stolen from her. What BS, we already know who is trying to buy (steal) the elections. The republican/tea party with the $250 Million Dollars of undisclosed contributions from “Special Interest Groups” like US Chamber of Commerce, American Crossroads, etc. Again an example of no shame hypocrisy.
An interesting read and information above.
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My comment:
The TARP worked and perhaps we as tax payers made 8% on our investment. Oh joy!
The implementation of TARP by the Obama Administration contributed to the avoidance of a depression perhaps as worse or much more worse than the Great Depression.
The Stimulus created 600K new private sector jobs and saved an estimated 1.4 - 3.5 million jobs depending on who you go to for your statistics, except mine because my job and the rest of the jobs in my IT department were 'outsourced'. Most of us were in the 'Retirement Window' anyway so throwing us on the waste pile boosted the bottom line for the Fortune 500 Corp that most of the folks in this IT Department had worked for for over 30+years. I guess we were just too expensive to keep around.
Now the 'nutburgers' in our society are about to perhaps throw out not only the gains we have already made climbing out of the proverbial debt ditch the Bush administration drove us into after Carter had basically warned us of these things we are experiencing today, Reagon ignored and added to the debt raising it to over $2.6 Trillion for the first time in our history by the time he left office from a modest $826 Billion. Bush Sr. added even more to $4 Trillion and then by some manipulation of the numbers Clinton actually reversed the trend and gave us a 'Surplus on the Deficit' of what was it? $236 Billion on a National Debt of $5.7 Trillion and then The Great 'W' and Congress ran it up to a $1.55 Trillion Deficit on an outrageous US Federal Debt for end FY 2010 of $13.787 trillion. Not paying for 2 Undeclared wars. Paying the Military Industrial Complex for the weapons to make war and then allowing them to double bang our tax dollars by awarding them non-competitive contracts to rebuild the damage we caused during the wars. All the time ignoring our own infrastructure and economy through non funding and deregulation.
Now I was a bit confused about the numbers that are being thrown about during the mid-term election. I found this site that tells us what each state has/is/will be spending:
http://usgovernmentspending.com/state_spend_gdp_population
and when it comes to the Federal Spending this is a great site to spend some time on:
http://usgovernmentspending.com/index.php
The National Debt is about $14 Trilion
This midterm election has been a real eye opener. I voted but I'm not sure exactly what for???
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