At 11:00pm last night, the Congressional Conference Committee released the final draft of the Federal Stimulus Bill. At 9:00am today, the House of Representatives began discussion on the bill. The vote was early this afternoon.
Previously, the Democrat Leadership PROMISED 48 hours for the bill to be reviewed between release from the Conference Committee and final voting. The 48 hours won't be up until 11:00pm Saturday Night. By that time, we the Taxpayers will have already sent Nancy Pelosi to Italy to meet the Pope. In fact, as I write this... 18 hours after the release, Nancy Pelosi is getting ready to fly in a government flight (have we noticed that when executives need to travel they need to travel commercially... but not Congress).
That means that the Democrat's Leadership missed their 48 hours by at least 33 hours!
The Senate will be voting either tonight or tomorrow on the bill... also under the 48 hour moratorium. The vote will at least be closer there...
During the Presidential Campaign, PrezBO PROMISED that when given major legislation for signing, he would have a "5 Day Sunshine Period" between the bill being sent to the White House and signing. The soonest that the bill could possibly sent to the President's Desk is tonight... Friday. Obama plans on signing this bill on Monday. If the bill doesn't pass until Saturday evening, it is very possible that the "5 Day Sunshine Period" might actually last less than 48 hours.
That means that the President will miss his 5 day period by at least 3 days!
For 2 years we have been hammered by the message of "Change". Obama has talked over and over about transparency and disclosure. He has made beautiful speeches and delivered populist sound bites. The speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader have backed up the President and promised the American people that the government wasn't going to operate behind closed doors and out of the light...
And just to add the little icing flowers to the big beautiful cake... when the stimulus bill was presented, it was done in an unsearchable format. A reader couldn't search the bill for key phrases... It is well over 1000 pages. Nancy Pelosi herself stated at the release that the language was often confusing and that Members of Congress needed to take their time to understand the language.
Is a week going to destroy the country?
I know that the arguement from Democrats will be that this needs to be done with great haste speed. Time is of the essence. But, is this not major legislation? Is this not EXACTLY what Obama was talking about when he promised to hold bills for 5 days so that the American People could know what he was signing?
Remember, the Congressional Budget Office has stated that between 20-25% of the bill could be considered stimulus. That means that 75-80% of the bill won't do much to stimulate the economy. That means that almost $600,000,000,000 of this money is being spent, not to stimulate the economy, but to put pet projects and long-term spending tracks in place. (and don't forget that they have also told Congress that the stimulus package would actually hinder GDP growth and employment in the medium and long range)
I have heard that among the most popular terms one finds when reading the bill is "operation and maintenance." Operation and maintenance ISN'T stimulus. It is regular spending. It should be in a regular spending bill.
And finally... We have already been told that this isn't the last of it. There is a new round of TARP spending coming... in addition to the second round of spending from the first batch of money. There is talk of an increased federal budget to support the new programs introduced in this "emergency bill."
We are being lied to by our politicians, and that last thing we can call that is "Change We Can Believe In."
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