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Posts Tagged ‘stimulus bill’
August 9th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Robert Rubin’s Formula for Success Equals Electoral Doom for Liberals

During a television appearance over the weekend former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin stumbled onto a hard truth for liberals when it comes to proving they can be trusted to reduce the deficit.

“If you could do it and it was credible and people believed it and it was real, I think that could do a lot for confidence.”

Let’s reword that a bit: If a deficit reduction plan was credible – meaning people believe it can work based on its assumptions and terms – and real – meaning the people proposing it are committed to implementing it – then the public would have confidence that the government could reduce the deficit.

Put another way: Credibility + Reality = Confidence

Applying that formula to ObamaCare and the Recovery Act shows just how much liberals fail to make the grade.

So far, the liberals running Washington, D.C. have shown themselves anything but credible and based in reality.  No wonder nearly two-thirds of Americans have no confidence in them.

December 22nd, 2009 at 11:53 am
Democrats Flee Sinking Ship
Posted by Print

The party of the donkey might have a 257-178 advantage in the House of Representatives but Alabama Representative Parker Griffith has just announced that he’s switching over to the GOP.

Griffith has spent most of his time in Congress opposing Speaker Pelosi’s legislative priorities, including the government takeover of health care and the $787 billion failed stimulus.   In fact, he was one of just eleven House Democrats to oppose the stimulus.

Griffith evidently saw the writing on the wall and recognized that having a “D” after his name would be a political liability in 2010.  His district, AL-5 (northern Alabama), gave President Obama 38% of the vote in 2008.

There is no official announcement yet from Representative Griffith.  Check back for further details.

November 11th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
SEIU & Obama: Organizing for a More Liberal America

Over on National Review, Stephen Spruiell gives an in-depth look at how the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is helping President Barack Obama remake America into a much more liberal place, one piece of legislation at a time. The excerpts below offer a powerful wake-up call to anyone thinking that the stimulus bill, health care reform, and card-check are anything other than massive redistributions of wealth.

On getting a union-friendly stimulus bill:

The stimulus bill was a top priority for SEIU because it contained massive bailouts for state governments and Medicaid. As mentioned above, states such as California, New York, and New Jersey have expanded their social-welfare systems beyond what they can afford, in response to pressures from SEIU and other public-sector unions. At the same time, their progressive income-tax structures have made them especially vulnerable to boom-and-bust cycles. When the credit bubble burst, these states were looking at massive deficits, layoffs, furloughs, and budget cuts. The stimulus bill included a $50 billion slush fund for state governments and $90 billion in Medicaid expansions, helping the states avoid a necessary round of belt-tightening and tax reform.”

A bit surprisingly, California came in for particularly rough treatment:

The most illustrative example of SEIU’s clout during this process came when the Obama administration threatened to withhold stimulus funds from the state of California if it went ahead with a planned reduction in payments to home health-care workers. The administration set up a conference call with state officials to discuss whether the cuts violated the terms of the stimulus, and state officials were surprised to learn that the administration had invited SEIU representatives to join the call. “This was really atypical and outside any norm I am familiar with,” California secretary of health and human services Kim Belshe told the Los Angeles Times. The administration backed down from the threat, but only after the story had leaked and caused significant blowback.”

On getting a union-friendly health care reform bill:

SEIU has poured millions into a group called Health Care for America Now, which has dispatched envoys to deliver portable pavilions, professionally printed placards, and uniform attire at almost every major health-care protest this year. Dennis Rivera sent hundreds of union activists to meetings this summer in an attempt to counteract opposition to the Democrats’ bill. “We’re running this campaign like this was a presidential campaign, and our candidate is health-care reform,” Rivera told the New York Times. Why does SEIU care so much about health-care reform? The subsidies and mandates in Democrats’ legislation would drive up demand for health-care services, meaning more revenue for hospitals, more health-care workers, and more members for SEIU.

The creation of a government-run insurance plan is an especially important priority for the SEIU. “The nexus between government and private industry would give SEIU a toehold to organize more workers,” explains J. Justin Wilson, managing director of the Center for Union Facts. Once the public option is in place, SEIU can pressure the bureaucracy to implement union-friendly policies. For example, the public option “might only reimburse hospitals that are unionized or have a neutrality position toward unions,” Wilson says.

And finally, supporting card-check legislation:

As important as the Democrats’ health-care plan is to SEIU, the union’s top priority remains the Employee Free Choice Act, otherwise known as the card-check bill. Under SEIU’s preferred version of the bill, employers would have to recognize a union once a majority of its employees had signed petition cards. This process would allow union organizers to identify holdouts and pressure them into signing up. The bill would also require business owners to allow union organizers to hold meetings with employees on the business’s property, while forbidding the owners to hold mandatory meetings to discuss unionization.

Finally, the bill includes a binding-arbitration provision that would allow the NLRB to impose a union contract on a business if negotiations with its union broke down. SEIU loves this provision, because Obama just named one of its lawyers, Craig Becker, to the NLRB. Businesses negotiating with the SEIU would have two choices: accept SEIU’s demands voluntarily or have the SEIU-friendly NLRB accept them for you.”

You can read the entire article here.