Here are the remainder of my thoughts. Read if you like.
I have to say this: While watching everyone stand and applaud my eyes couldn't help but be drawn to a bright red jacket in the front row. It was Hillary and my thought was, "You know, Obama, Hillary wasn't elected for a reason! Why did you put her as Secretary of State?"
My jaw hung open for about 12 minutes after I heard the following line from the speech: "We have a recovery plan free of earmarks!"
Did he say "Free of earmarks"?! Hang on:
FreeDictionary.com states to earmark is "To reserve or set aside for a particular purpose."
That's pretty vague. Well, the government says: Earmarks: funds provided by the Congress for projects or programs where the congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents Executive Branch merit-based or competitive allocation processes, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to manage critical aspects of the funds allocation process.
Whoa. Too much legalese. Give it to me in plain English.
Ok, Daniel Engber of Slate.com says, "No one can agree on the precise definition. In general, the word "earmark" refers to any element of a spending bill that allocates money for a very specific thing—a given project, say, or location, or institution. For example, if Congress passed a budget that gave a certain amount of money to the National Park Service as a whole, no one would consider it an earmark. But if Congress added a line to the budget specifying that some of that money must go toward the preservation of a single building—definitely an earmark.
Take another look at the stimulus package. Free of earmarks? The whole thing is earmarks. Every line item is an earmark! Come on Mr. President. We're smarter than that!
Let's take a look at your plans for the full economic recovery package. Let's look add up every program, shall we?
$10,000 Tax credit to purchase new home (2K for energy efficiency, 8K under new program. Approximately 480,000 new homes sold last year. Assuming identical results (unlikely due to the incentive) price tag for this program
.$4,800,000,000,000 Homeowner incentive plus:
...$819,000,000,000 Stimulus package
...$750,000,000,000 Bailout package for banks (could grow to 3 Trillion)
....$17,400,000,000 Auto Bailout package (could grow to 130 Billion)
.$1,000,000,000,000 in bad loans absorbed by government
....$50,000,000,000 to combat foreclosures
...$300,000,000,000 HOPE for homeowners program
.$7,736,400,000,000 Conservative Total Obama Spending.
$10,099,000,000,000 High Estimation Total Obama spending
Bear in mind this is not including the regular budgetary needs!
In case the zeros are too many: that's between $7 trillion 736 billion 400 million and $10 trillion 99 billion in spending. And the left's biggest complaint about the previous administration? Current cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Estimated to be approximately $600,500,000,000. 600 billion 500 million.
In other speech news: So much for withdrawal, huh? Increasing the number of troops, shifting them over to Afghanistan and expanding to include Pakistan? This isn't the same Obama that ran for President is it? Now it's 19 months before we are out of Iraq? That's not the figure I remember during the election...
I did agree with him on a few fronts:
The cost of healthcare is out of control. The solution? Not healthcare reform, rather a cap on malpractice law suits and regulation of the malpractice insurance. No more high premiums, no more high cost coverage, no more high cost coverage.
"Dropping out [of high school] is not only quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country." Never thought of it that way. Well spoken and I agree.
If you've only read this post, don't miss my main thoughts on the speech in the post above!
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