Today in Washington D. C. - Feb 25, 2009

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Tags: INSERT TAGS To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!Yesterday, the Senate confirmed the appointment of Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA) to be Secretary of Labor. The Senate also voted 62-34 to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 160, the DC voting bill and resumed consideration today of the bill that would grant un-Constitutional House voting rights the delegate from the District of Colombia. Votes on amendments to the bill are possible today.

The day after President Obama warned that both parties “will have to sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no dollars,” the House is set to pass a $410 billion omnibus appropriations bill that, according to Politico, “adds another $20.5 billion” on top of last year’s budget requests and “breaks the trillion-dollar mark for nonemergency appropriations” in one year.

Speaking to reporters yesterday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell pointed to one of the key problems with this bill, duplicative spending for programs already funded or granted funding increases in the stimulus. Sen. McConnell said, “The Democrats are asking taxpayers to pay for over 100 accounts in the omnibus bill that are also in the stimulus bill.”

But the president made plain last night that this is only the tip of the proverbial spending iceberg. Politico described the plans suggested by President Obama thusly, “The 52-minute address outlined more commitments by the public sector, more intervention into the private economy, and more spending than anything Washington has undertaken at least since the Great Society and more likely the New Deal.”

As Sen. McConnell noted on CNN on Sunday, “We’ve spent, in this new administration, 32 days, $36 billion a day. If you add all that up, that’s as much as the previous administration spent over seven years on both the war on terror and the recovery from Katrina.” But this is before considering the costs of some of the major Obama proposals such as carbon cap and trade, a comprehensive health care reform, further shoring up tottering banks, and even more education spending.

The key question is where is all the money for this? The Wall Street Journal wrote yesterday, “With the stimulus and Mr. Obama’s proposed housing rescue, the deficit [for 2009] is likely to be well in excess of $1.5 trillion and possibly as wide as $1.9 trillion, according to private forecasts.” How much will that figure increase before the year is over, given how much has been spent just in the first month?

President Obama was right in saying that we should strive to “save our children from a future of debt,” but sacrificing certain priorities is going to have to start somewhere if we’re to do that. Duplicative spending in the omnibus bill would be a positive beginning.

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Tags: DC, US Congress, US Senate, voting rights, Washington D.C. To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!