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Sherrod Brown (D-OH) makes racist remark to group of interns

June 30, 2010 By Carol Greenberg
Sen. Sherrod Brown, (D-OH)

Sen. Sherrod Brown, (D-OH)

Today I’ve seen a variety of topics to choose from to write about, but when I saw this one there was no question this was it. I hail from Ohio so naturally I felt compelled to post about our illustrious Sen. Sherrod Brown, (not to be confused with Sen. Scott Brown-R-MA). Sherrod, as I affectionately call him; led the charge for a public option on healthcare as evidenced by his website. All those passionate videos and letters read from Ohioans before Congress. The huge list of his “events” on healthcare. Now that Healthcare Reform is law, Sherrod has transferred his passion to the Wall St. Reform bill. Almost every day I receive an e-mail from Sherrod, telling me how wonderful Wall St. Reform will be, which if passed, really amounts to the government takeover of up to 60% of our economy. So after Sherrod’s wonderful accomplishments, imagine my surprise and how stunned a group of interns were to hear these words from our beloved Sherrod, per the Daily Caller:

“He said that people who were opposed to health-care reform were similar to the bigots and racists that were against desegregation reform,” a Republican congressional intern who attended the lecture told The Daily Caller. The intern requested not to be named. “It was ridiculous,” he added.

Sounds like a racist remark to me, but that is my opinion. However, I’m pretty sure if GW Bush had said something like this there would be a protest on the White House lawn and elsewhere with him being burned in effigy. Same would hold true for a Republican put perhaps to a lesser degree, but a broo-ha-ha nonetheless. And I did a google search on this story. And wouldn’t you know it. Only other link I could find was on a personal blog. No main stream media, no newspapers. No nothing. Well, I’m going to put this story out there. Come on Sherrod. I live in Ohio. I help pay your salary. You’ve embarrassed your constituents, you need to apologize to those impressionable interns and to me!

Crossposted

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Leading economist releases cap & trade “522K job-killer” report today

June 30, 2010 By Carol Greenberg
Andrew Chamberlain

Andrew Chamberlain

Andrew Chamberlain is the Chief Economist and Principal of Chamberlain Economics, L.L.C. His field of expertise is public finance economics and he has written extensively on tax and budget policy. His areas of study have included estimates of tax and budget incidence, methods for estimating tax burdens, and estimating tax burdens households would face from a cap and trade system.

Enter the hotly contested and widely controversial “cap and trade” bill which narrowly passed the House on June 26, 2009 by a 219-212 margin.

Bloomberg Business gives a good summary for lay people on the nature of a “cap and trade” system:

The bill sets a cap on emissions of greenhouse gases. By 2020, emissions must be reduced 17% over 2005 levels. By 2050, emissions must be reduced 80% or more. Staying under these caps is done with a system of permits or allowances. Companies must have an allowance for every ton of greenhouse gas they emit. They are allowed to buy and sell those allowances, but gradually the total number of allowances will be reduced, thus reducing overall emissions.

Now it’s the Senate’s turn, with Kerry and Lieberman setting the stage for the passage of their version of the bill. They and other senators met yesterday with Mr. Obama over discussions of the bill, with Mr. Obama apparently insistent it must include a price for carbon emissions, which he blames for global warming. The Republicans in the meeting lambasted the bill, claiming it is really a “national energy tax.”

“If we want a clean energy bill, take a national energy tax off the table in the middle of a recession while we focus on the oil spill and focus on what we agree on,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

The Institute for Energy Research commissioned a report from Mr. Chamberlain on the impact of such a law on American businesses and households and today that report was released.  It is titled PAYING FOR THE “AMERICAN POWER ACT”: AN ECONOMIC AND DISTRIBUTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE KERRY-LIEBERMAN CAP-AND-TRADE BILL. Key points of the report are:

  • The American Power Act would reduce U.S. employment by roughly 522,000 jobs in 2015, rising to over 5.1 million jobs by 2050.
  • Households would face a gross annual burden of $125.9 billion per year or $1,042 per household, with costs disproportionately borne by low-income households.
  • On a net basis, the top income quintile will benefit financially, redistributing to these households roughly $12.3 billion per year from the bottom 80 percent of earners.
  • Households over age 75 bear the largest burden at 2.3 percent of income, followed by households aged 65-74 and under age 25 at 2.1 percent. By contrast, the nation’s highest-earning households between age 45 and 54 years would bear the smallest percentage burden of just 1.5 percent.
  • Contrary to the legislation’s stated goal of reducing price volatility by excluding petroleum refiners from quarterly auctions, the Kerry-Lieberman bill is likely to significantly increase allowance price volatility from quarter to quarter, compared to an ordinary auction in which all covered industries bid for allowances.

Please check out page 46 for a table of the economic impact of Kerry-Lieberman on employment and household earnings for various U.S. industries, year 2020. I guarantee you, it isn’t pretty. Mr. Chamberlain’s summary on page 47 states the legislation falls short of its goals because its aim is to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by sharing the burden across US businesses and households equitably without burdening the US economy. The above bulleted items clearly show that isn’t possible in its present form. Mr. Chamberlain goes on to say:

Aside from the distributional impact of the bill, Kerry-Lieberman suffers from serious flaws in its policy design.  As debate over climate policy continues in the U.S. Senate, lawmakers should reflect on these flawed aspects of the Kerry-Lieberman bill and consider ways of addressing the problems identified in this study.

Please take a close look at the Institute for Energy Research. It’s an excellent site for learning about energy usage in the US as well as conducting research and analysis of the global energy markets.

IER

Crossposted

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Breaking news: Dems cancel budget!

June 28, 2010 By Carol Greenberg

It’s official. The Dems have cancelled the budget. At least until after the election…

We have confirmed that the federal budget planned for fiscal year 2011 has been canceled. The cause: Washington Democrats’ out-of-control spending spree. We are here now outside the Capitol awaiting an apology from Washington Democrats for this betrayal of hard-working American taxpayers.

Background info is here.

Crossposted

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Sunday funnies

June 27, 2010 By Carol Greenberg

Obama & medals

BP & polls & Obama

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The hypocrisy of Hoyer on the “no budget” issue.

June 27, 2010 By Carol Greenberg

Thank goodness I found this video. It’s priceless and jaw-dropping:

Steny Hoyer complaining about the Republicans huge budget and too much spending. In 2006. There is still no budget from Congress this year which is mandated by April 15. And we all know why. The Dems think we are stupid enough to not know that they have spent out of control and don’t want us to know about it.

The same above hypocrite laments again in 2007:

House Republicans are now on the cusp of failing to meet the most basic responsibility of governing: enacting a budget. —Steny Hoyer

May I remind Rep. Hoyer Obama has tripled the deficit since he’s been in office.

Non-partisan CBO US deficit comparisons, triples under Obama

Non-partisan CBO US deficit comparisons, triples under Obama

And in April of this year Hoyer gave somber warnings to a group of students at the University of Maryland about the dangers of spending too much:

“This means more to you than it does to me. It means a lot to me. But to you, it is crushing your generation with debt,” Hoyer said.

Hoyer’s “excuse” for not passing a budget until December is he wants to wait for Obama’s Executive-Ordered “National Commission of Fiscal Responsibility and Reform” report.

“It isn’t possible to debate and pass a realistic, long-term budget until we’ve considered the bipartisan commission’s deficit-reduction plan, which is expected in December.”

I’ve checked the non-partisan member list of the Debt Commission. Here it is:

Co-Chairmen:

  • Sen. Alan Simpson. Former Republican Senator from Wyoming.
  • Erskine Bowles, Chief of Staff to President Clinton.

Executive Director:

  • Bruce Reed, Chief Domestic Policy Adviser to President Clinton.

Commissioners:

  • Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT)
  • Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA 31)
  • Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI 4)
  • Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK)
  • Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND)
  • David Cote, Chairman and CEO, Honeywell International
  • Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID
  • Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL)
  • Ann Fudge, Former CEO, Young & Rubicam Brands
  • Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH)
  • Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX 5)
  • Alice Rivlin, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institute and former Director, Office of Management & Budget
  • Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI 1)
  • Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL 9)
  • Rep. John Spratt (D-SC 5)
  • Andrew Stern, President, Service Employees International Union

Anyone notice anything strange besides the fact that Stern in on the list? It’s who is not on the list. There are no Nobel-Prize winning economists; no economists; no professors of economics; no leading accounting firms; not even a Certified Public Accountant. No banks, bankers, investment firms, international monetary investors or traders.

The glaring problem with Leader Hoyer’s excuse is that the Commission was never meant to have any effect on the FY 2011 budget process, and no Democrat ever asserted that this year’s budget depended on the Commission’s recommendations. The American people deserve a budget from the House, not a political smokescreen. The Commission was created by a presidential decree and has nothing to do with the Democrats’ responsibility to pass an annual budget. Passing an annual budget is undisputedly the responsibility of Congress and is being shirked by Democrats so they can hide their big spending, big deficit agenda from taxpayers until after the election.

If you want to knock yourself out, here is a 36 page pdf file on how the deficit reached the insane figure of $1.4 trillion of GDP. Yep. They are probably going to say “GWB made me vote for all the crapola spending.”

The monthly treasury statement from January 1-May31 of this year tells us the US has racked up an incredible $935 billion in deficit spending.

What Does This Mean for American Taxpayers and Struggling Families? Failing to produce a budget signals instability to investors and businesses and costs Americans jobs. It means that record spending will continue to skyrocket unchecked as Democrats use future generations as collateral to borrow from China. In addition, countries with too much debt lose credibility on the international stage and extreme borrowing on the part of nations is a direct threat to their national security.

In this blogger’s opinion, the Democrats failure to pass a budget is an appalling dereliction of duty.

$13,135,644,978,000.00

Amount of national debt as/of the writing of this post.

Crossposted

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Filed Under budget, Debt Commission Tagged With budget, Debt Commission, deficit, Hoyer