Senate Saturday Stimulus Debate Part Deux

[After all these windbags finish spoutin’, the late, great Billy Preston says it best.]

February, 7, 2009 — Liveblogging the Senate debate on the huge, now $1.2 trillion bill. Quoted from live testimony, as best I can keep up with the typing, for as long as it’s interesting — or should I say frustrating.

PART DEUX:

Sen. Tom Udal, D-NM —

Blah, blah, blah

Helping the states so they don’t contribute to the downward spiral.

Helping states — isn’t that a Republican thing?

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-AL

There’s no free lunch. you can’t make nuthin’ come from nothin’.

Sessions quoted Larry Summers from Financial Times in 2007-8:

Fiscal stimulus must be: “timely, targeted and temporary” and must be targeted well. Poorly targeted stimulus can make things worse than if we didn’t do anything at all.

We’ll be paying $40 billion PER YEAR INTEREST on this bill.

Quoted Alice Rivlin, Budget Secretary during Clinton Administration: A long term investment plan should not be put together hastily or lumped in with an anti-recession package. The element of the investment program must be carefully planned and will not create jobs right away. Otherwise, money will be wasted if the investments are not carefully crafted.

We supported ethanol and thought it would fix all our problems (and it didn’t.)

This bill contains: $120 billion of “bow wave” spending that will continue past the spending in the bill.

Not reflecting well on the Congress. Last year, Paulson said we must pass $700 billion bill before Asian markets opened the next morning. Only $350 have been spent to date, so wasn’t most important thing in the world and results are dubious. It went outside the budget process with very little in terms of hearings and was an emergency bill passed outside of the regular appropriations process. Like this bill, it didn’t go through authorization or appropriations committees.

In a few days, we’ll get another Wall Street bailout and perhaps housing bill. We’re being asked to make huge and unprecedented expenditures without saying how they compete with other ongoing programs.

I think we’re losing our discipline. I voted against the Bush Wall St. bailout, and I’ll vote against this one unless it’s changed.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-AR —

Blah, blah, blah, we came together and trimmed $100 billion. Can’t we all get along and reduce the major spending in this bill. We should be proud because we’re being bi-partisan.

She sounds like a grade school teacher: let’s be patient and all get along. What a waste of time. Talk about what’s in the f*ckin’ bill that you’re trying to pass.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA —

Discussed proposal for provision for small businesses, capital gains cuts for small business original investment be targeted to $1.5 billion and is a good investment.

Objected to children’s health insurance program passed last week in that it would give it to kids with insurance already instead of those without it???

Dems are trying to nationalize healthcare. Normally they should be in the healthcare reform package of which I’m a part of planning. Giving money to states isn’t targeted, you can get a subsidy to pay for health insurance regardless of how much you make.

National Science Foundation porno idiot – culture there that encourages this sort of thing. Porno not the main problem, just that the NSF hasn’t been the subject of much scrutiny over the years. More about the porno.

Grassley soap boxing about morality. I’m sure the NSF must be a hotbed of porno viewing. sigh. Sen. Barbara Mikulski will be looking into it. Go, Barbara!

Grassley Amendment: Show us the Money, so we can see where it’s going. If an agency gets a request for the records by Congress, it must comply. Vote for my amendment!

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-WV —

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL —

I lost interest after a couple of hours of this. Not too much information about what exactly in the bill. sigh. But anyway, here’s as far as I got . . .