Hill Republicans: Stimulus aids illegal immigrants

	Hill Republican: Stimulus aids illegal immigrants Jan 29 01:02 PM US/Eastern By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) – The $800 billion-plus economic stimulus measure making its way through Congress could steer government checks to illegal immigrants, a top Republican congressional official asserted Thursday.The legislation, which would send tax credits of $500 per worker and $1,000 per couple, expressly disqualifies nonresident aliens, but it would allow people who don’t have Social Security numbers to be eligible for the checks. Undocumented immigrants who are not eligible for a Social Security number can file tax returns with an alternative number. A House-passed version of the economic recovery bill and one making its way through the Senate would allow anyone with such a number, called an individual taxpayer identification number, to qualify for the tax credits. A revolt among GOP conservatives to similar provisions of a 2008 economic stimulus bill, which sent rebate checks to most wage earners, forced Democratic congressional leaders to add stricter eligibility requirements. That legislation, enacted in February 2008, required that people have valid Social Security numbers in order to get checks. The GOP official voiced concerns about the latest economic aid measure on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it publicly. Republicans have already blasted the package for including what they argue is wasteful spending and omitting tax cuts for wealthier people and businesses they say are needed to jump-start the anemic economy. Not a single Republican voted for an $819 billion version of the plan when it passed the House on Wednesday. GOP senators arranged a midday news conference to voice their concerns. Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Palin, Obama to share stage

Palin, Obama to share stage By: Jonathan Martin January 29, 2009 10:30 AM EST

In what could be a preview of the 2012 presidential race, Sarah Palin and Barack Obama will share a stage together this Saturday night in Washington, D.C., Politico has learned. The Alaska governor and former GOP vice presidential nominee, making her first trip to the nation’s capital since the election, will join the President at the Alfalfa Dinner, a venerable gathering of the city’s political elite. Palin and Obama will both address the black tie crowd at the Capital Hilton, aides to each say. The duo will not, though, be heard by the general public. By tradition, the old world gathering, now in its 96th year, bars reporters. Quotes from the rostrum do, however, tend to find their way out to reporters in the lobby. It’s a light-hearted affair, with political types playfully roasting themselves and one another. The dinner is put on by the Alfalfa Club, an exclusive list of about 200 movers and shakers whose only purpose is to throw the annual dinner on the last Saturday of January. The name is honor of a plant known to do anything for a drink. Comprised of mostly older white men, the group didn’t induct women until 1993. Blacks were only welcomed in the 1970s. Presidents, though, almost always attend and speak. And aside from the real thing, club members always nominate a mock candidate for the highest office in the land. The “nominee” is then required to give an acceptance speech. Should Palin be this year’s lucky nominee, she’ll be in good company: Three honorees have actually gone on to actually become president – Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Obama’s Bipartisan Stimulus Plan: Neither Stimulative Nor Bipartisan

Obama’s Bipartisan Stimulus Plan: Neither Stimulative Nor Bipartisan

Posted By Jennifer Rubin On January 29, 2009 @ 12:48 am In . Feature 01, Politics | 38 Comments

President Obama’s stimulus plan, we were told, was designed to jolt the economy, “save” or “create” jobs and garner bipartisan support. The bill which passed the House Wednesday by a  244-188 margin (attracting not a single Republican vote and losing eleven Democrats) does none of these things. Although the bill now goes to the Senate, the House vote is in a sense a stunning rebuke. As Minority Leader John Boehner said in a [1] released statement: “”This was a bipartisan rejection of a partisan bill.”    

So what happened?

The stimulus bill which passed is the handiwork of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She certainly did not constrain herself to the concept of a “stimulus” plan. The [2] Wall Street Journal explained:

We’ve looked it over, and even we can’t quite believe it. There’s $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn’t turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There’s even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.
In selling the plan, President Obama has said this bill will make “dramatic investments to revive our flagging economy.” Well, you be the judge. Some $30 billion, or less than 5% of the spending in the bill, is for fixing bridges or other highway projects. There’s another $40 billion for broadband and electric grid development, airports and clean water projects that are arguably worthwhile priorities.
Add the roughly $20 billion for business tax cuts, and by our estimate only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus. And even many of these projects aren’t likely to help the economy immediately. As Peter Orszag, the President’s new budget director, told Congress a year ago, “even those [public works] that are ‘on the shelf’ generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to provide timely stimulus to the economy. 

The Democrats were shamed into removing a couple of the more egregious items — hundreds of millions to reseed the National Mall lawn and to pay for contraceptives. But the contours of the bill remained essentially the same and largely untouched by Republican hands.

And not only Republicans complained that the bill’s failure to focus on short term “stimulus” spending (including so-called “shovel ready” infrastructure projects). [3] MSM outlets observed that this was a bill with plenty of superfluous, non-stimulative spending. And the [4] Congressional Budget Office explained that much of the money won’t be spent for eighteen months and that less than 10% of the money will be spent on those infrastructure projects. Independent [5] economists and business leaders expressed doubts that the stimulus package would do much to alleviate unemployment or spur growth. Even economists such as [6] Martin Feldstein who supported the concept of a stimulus bill declared that this one needed to be “thoroughly revised” to meet its stated goals.

As [7] Jim Manzi explained:

So, if this is a “normal” length recession, the spending bill will have the classic problem that fiscal stimulus does-namely, it comes too late to do much good, but right on time to help stoke inflation and mis-allocation of resources that are suddenly in high demand as the economy enters a recovery.  And if this is a very long-lasting recession, more like a U.S. 1930s Depression or Japan 1990s “lost decade”, then the problem is so long-lasting that we’re not really debating a stimulus bill, we’re debating a near-permanent shift of control of resources to the government, which doesn’t exactly have a sterling track record of success. Only if this is a “Goldilocks-length” recession of more than 1-2 years, but less than a decade (which is a pretty hard beast to find in modern American history) would this temporal spending pattern turn out to be wise.

Republicans desire for significant tax rate cuts and for defense spending in lieu of some of the domestic grab-bag of traditional liberal spending items went unheeded. By the [8] weekend Republicans and conservative commentators were out in full force warning that the bill in its current form was unacceptable. And while President Obama paid a courtesy visit to the Hill, he did not address their fundamental concerns. By the end of the process, with virtually [5] every fiscal conservative organization opposing the bill, Republicans lacked any reason to vote for it. So they didn’t — not a single one.

In short, the Pelosi bill amounts to “a wish list for the left wing of the Democratic Party,” as Manzi explained. He listed the items costing $10B or more: 

$20.0 billion to increase the maximum benefit under the Supplemental Nutrition Assurance Program (i.e., Food Stamps)

$18.5 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs

$20.4 billion for programs administered by the Department of health and Human  Services

$20.0 billion to renovate elementary and secondary schools

$17.6 billion for Pell grants and other student financial assistance at post-secondary institutions

$29.1 billion for other elementary and secondary educational programs

$30.0 billion for highway construction

$13.1 billion for other transportation programs

$11.2 billion for housing assistance programs administered by HUD

$19.5 billion (minimum, could be higher, as per Title XIII) for education grants to states

$27.1 billion for increase unemployment benefits

$13.3 billion to increase health insurance for unemployed workers

$11.1 billion for “Other Unemployment Compensation”

$20.2 billion for Medicaid and Medicare incentive payments to encourage providers to improve healthcare IT.

 

And all that “shovel ready” infrastructure did not really materialize. [9] Larry Kudlow explains:

And the infrastructure bailout turns out to be vastly smaller than originally advertised. In the 1950s, Ike launched a $550 billion highway-building plan. Today’s stimulus package has $30 billion in highway-related projects, and perhaps another $40 billion way down the road for broadband and electric-grid-type developments.The public expected an infrastructure build-out that actually made some sense. That’s not what they’re getting.

The question remains why the new President, who had promised a truly bipartisan bill and warned about throwing money imprudently around, would have supported this approach. One theory is that he was run over by the Democratic steam train in the House and lacked the will or skill to pull Pelosi back. Another is that his high-minded rhetoric (seeking a more surgical approach to combating the recession and bipartisan support) was simply that — rhetoric.

Whatever the genesis of the bill, neither the contents or the final vote count was what many had anticipated just a week after President Obama swept into Washington. Its failure to attract any Republican support and the President’s refusal to incorporate (let alone take seriously) Republican policy ideas ends, for all intents and purposes, the bipartisan honeymoon. Republicans have found their voice and intend to stand on principle when the legislation offered is as lacking in merit as the stimulus bill.

In this case, the Republicans were in no mood to offer “cover” to the Democrats for a bad bill. They are not about to spare the Democrats from the responsibility for a bill which will expand the deficit (the total cost already surpasses $1 trillion with interest included) without substantially improving the short term economic outlook.

The bill now moves on to the Senate. President Obama had hoped to win [10] eighty votes as a sign of his bipartisan support. That seems highly unlikely absent a complete reworking of the bill. As one advisor to a Senate Republican put it: “Obama is going to have to realize that tough choices come with governing, and right now his choice is to dispense with the bipartisan veneer he wants on this bill or start flexing muscles on Democrat leaders.”

The betting is that at the end of the legislative process we will have a bill that is not very stimulative nor bipartisan. But it will be extremely expensive. That, it seems,  is what comes from “New Politics,” which come to think of it, isn’t new at all.

Getting Conservatism Back on Track

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/getting-conservatism-back-on-track/

Barack Obama’s Al Qaida initiative began months before his election

Report: Barack Obama’s Al Qaida initiative began months before his election

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama was working with Arab intermediaries to establish an unofficial dialogue with Al Qaida long before his election as the 44th U.S. president, according to a report in the upcoming weekly edition of

Al Qaida has offered what has been described as a truce in exchange for a U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to the report. in the upcoming weekly edition of Geostrategy-Direct.com

Obama has deemed the U.S. reconciliation with the Muslim world, including Iran, as his main foreign policy goal, sources quoted in the report said. The president has been aided by several Persian Gulf Arab Muslims with ties to Al Qaida’s leadership in Pakistan, they said.

On his first day in office, Obama ordered the shutdown of the U.S. Navy prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which where 245 suspected Al Qaida members are detained.

“My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy — we sometimes make mistakes — we have not been perfect,” Obama said.

The two presidential actions have already prompted calls for reconciliation by a range of leading Muslims. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi called on the United States to launch a dialogue with Al Qaida chief Osama Bin Laden while the Al Qaida-aligned Gamiat Islamiya urged an immediate four-month ceasefire.

At this point, according to the report, Al Qaida appears divided over Obama.

“Addressing the Islamic world, Obama said we are in need of a new direction,” a statement by Gamiat leaders said. “So he is calling for adopting a new approach that differs to the blocked and irrational path that [former U.S. President George] Bush followed.”

The report also says Obama’s initiative has been endorsed by much of the U.S. intelligence community.

“The United States has imposed attrition on Al Qaida, disrupting its command, control and communications and isolating it,” George Friedman, a leading U.S. strategist and director of Stratfor, said in a Stratfor.com report.

“To avoid penetration by hostile intelligence services, Al Qaida has not recruited new cadres for its primary unit. This makes it very difficult to develop intelligence on Al Qaida, but it also makes it impossible for Al Qaida to replace its losses.”

Still, Saudi Arabia’ royalty fears any reconciliation between Al Qaida and the United States. The sources said Saudi King Abdullah worries that Obama’s effort would legitimize Al Qaida and bolster its status in the Gulf Arab kingdom.
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