Claire McCaskill is in the news calling out Missouri state legislators for daring to say the stimulus was a failure. In what could be considered an excellent political jab, McCaskill wants to know what Republicans would like to cut if stimulus dollars were actually not made available for this year's budget.
It's McCaskill's way of trying to appear financially sound and put the Republicans into a Catch-22. If they name programs, the Democrats will whine about the draconian budget cuts in a time of crisis. If the Republicans can't come up with specific cuts, then they sound like they hypocrites.
Icet was on Mark Reardon (KMOX) this afternoon, and he pointed out that federal money did come to the states, but it was only kicking the problem down the road. Stimulus money, which is really only borrowed or printed money, will run out. The economy isn't getting better in terms of tax revenues, and now the budget cuts will be even more extreme.
Luckily for Icet and the Republicans, they've been saying this all along.
Intro: House Republicans are saying the governor's budget proposal relies too heavily on a federal government bailout. Brian Jarvis has more from Jefferson City.>
Republicans agree with Governor Jay Nixon's budget proposal because it doesn't raise taxes. But that's where the agreement ends.
House Budget Chair Allen Icet of St. Louis County says Nixon is counting on an 800 million dollar bailout from the federal government to balance the books.
Icet calls that is "bad budgeting."
The stimulus has failed miserably in creating jobs, but it did allow states to coast for another year or two without making necessary cuts in their spending. States can't borrow the same way the government can, so the stimulus was used to pay for things like the Missouri Blue Book. That's right. US Taxpayer funds went to create a book that talks about what great people work in our state government.
This is the problem with federal spending. When the money does come, you have to take it. A state would be stupid to cut off all pork while everyone else is at the trough. But let's not pretend that somehow Claire McCaskill is above this. She voted for the stimulus bill. If she had not voted for it, it wouldn't have passed. At this point, she's just looking for ways to divert attention from the healthcare fiasco.
McCaskill is out trying to claim the jobs picture is better, but with news that the jobs numbers were off by 880,000 at the last revision, it's dishonest to pretend we know the situation now. The economy was always slated to recover some in third and fourth quarter, without the stimulus. Obama told us that unemployment would stop at 8% with the stimulus. She's out on Twitter posting this link to a jobs chart.
If she were honest, she'd be talking about this one, since it relates to the stimulus.
Or better yet, she'd take a graph and show what happened to jobs and the economy since the Democrats took both houses of Congress and were sworn in January 2007. Here's a little ol' position piece from Claire in 2006.
As Missouri’s state auditor, Claire has won high praise for her tough approach to wasteful spending. She has cracked down on government waste by targeting no-bid contracts, frivolous spending, and bureaucratic incompetence. Claire pledges to take on the sacred cows in DC and force them to take deficit reduction seriously. Our national debt is now at a staggering $9 trillion. In Washington, Claire will fight to restore pay-as-you-go funding so that Washington is forced to put its fiscal house in order.
Take on sacred cows that gave us $8 trillion debt
Since taking office, the US National Debt has soared from $9 trillion to $12 trillion, and we're looking at trillion dollar deficits for the next decade. And that's with pay-go.
Claire has been part of that problem. Maybe she should speak to her fellow Senators, instead of trying to create a political story about Missouri state legislators.
The bickering will continue until we remove power from Washington. Rather than talk about budget changes, which no collective group will follow, how about power changes where Congressional budget authority is limited.
Posted by: Greg | 02/11/2010 at 07:57 AM