Do you remember the famous chart that Christina Romer, then the chief architect of President Obama’s plan and now Chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, produced to help sell the President’s “stimulus” plan to the public?
 
Her analysis found that unemployment would drop to 7% by the end of 2010 if we passed the “stimulus” bill.  Her analysis also showed that even without the “stimulus,” unemployment would peak at 9%.

That hasn’t been the case. 2. 7 million jobs have been lost since “stimulus” began. Seven months after the “stimulus” was passed, 49 of 50 states have lost jobs. Manufacturing and construction, which the White House promised would gain the most jobs, are actually among the largest job losers by percentage. And, economists – including Ms. Romer – now agree that unemployment will hover around 10% through 2010.

And what’s worse, apparently we’ve already seen the biggest jolt that was expected from the “stimulus.”  Romer said last week in testimony before Congress that, “Most analysts predict that the fiscal stimulus will have its greatest impact on growth in the second and third quarters of 2009.  By mid-2010 fiscal stimulus will likely be contributing little to further growth.”

Yet, we continue to hear stories each week about how your “stimulus” dollars are really being used, and abused. For instance, it’s been reported that Wichita, Kansas is using part of its $26 million to spay and neuter pets.  Eric Cantor, the Republican Whip, first brought some of the abuses of this funding to light on his blog, including this one:

Eight Tampa Bay cosmetology and massage schools are receiving $2.3 million in stimulus funds to pay the tuitions for hairdressers, masseuses and nail technicians. The $2.3 million is coming out of the Pell Grant program which received $17 billion in federal stimulus grants.

Monica Ponce, the owner of Tampa’s Muse The Salon, doesn’t believe there is actually a demand for more beauty school graduates in the bay area. Chad Malm, owner of Tampa’s Salon Jack, agreed with Ponce noting there are already plenty of hairdressers in the area. According to Malm, not only is the idea of subsidizing beauty school tuitions ridiculous, it’s also “wasting tax dollars.”

In fact, only 1 to 2 percent of beauty school graduates will be working in the field five years from graduation, according to the Florida Cosmetology Association. Meaning, American taxpayer money is going towards non-permanent jobs within a profession that isn’t hiring.

Source: Tampabay.com
 
What’s worse:  Congress hasn’t seemed to have learned its lesson!  Later today, the House is expected to consider and pass a new continuing resolution to keep government funded until Congress finishes its work on the fiscal year 2010 spending bills.  And, the Democrats have turned it into a “mini-stimulus,” according to news reports!  They’re loading it up with more “stimulus” provisions, including provisions to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – the housing giants that perverted their mission of providing mortgage assistance to the poor, leading to the housing market meltdown – to provide mortgages for up to nearly $730,000. 

With fiscal irresponsibility like this, it’s no wonder why Americans have such a low opinion of Congress. Let’s get real.
 

You may recall that when Congress was bailing out the auto industry, I had real concerns about whether the taxpayers would ever get that money back. The auto industry, GM in particular, has had a poor track record with loans in the past, having come back to the federal government again and again with its hand out. Last December, the U.S. Treasury Department loaned General Motors $13 billion. In the spring, Treasury loaned GM another $6 billion. In June, days before GM declared bankruptcy, the Administration loaned another $30 billion – just in time to convert taxpayer loans to equity taking ownership of GM. That’s a total of $49 billion.

The problem is that President Obama’s former “car czar,” Steve Rattner, estimates that the taxpayers’ stake in GM now stands around $25 billion. That means $24 billion of taxpayer dollars may have been lost for good. In fact, despite this multi-billion dollar cash infusion to GM, sales declined by 45% in September, while privately-owned Ford Motors fell only 6%. And, that makes it far less promising for taxpayers.

What’s more, we know little to nothing about how this whole transaction transpired.  The President’s Automotive Task Force has operated in complete secrecy and they must be held accountable for their actions.  Taxpayers deserve both fiscal responsibility and transparency from their government.
 

Reuters is reporting that there is a very real possibility that the United States could lose its “AAA” rating if we do not take the necessary steps to reduce our deficit in the next three to four years. Moody’s lead analyst for the United States said very bluntly, “The AAA rating of the U.S. is not guaranteed.”
 
At the end of this fiscal year (September 30, 2009), the U.S. government recorded a deficit $1.417 trillion, the highest it’s ever been in our nation’s history. Yet, this startling number has not fazed President Obama and Democrat leaders in Washington one bit and they continue to plow forward with their reckless spending agenda.
 
It’s hard to deny that a big contributor to this astronomical deficit was the $700-billion bank bailout program (known as TARP) passed back in October of 2008. Just last week, TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky, who is in charge of overseeing the bailout program on behalf of the taxpayers, said that our economy may be at a greater risk now than we were at the time the program was put into place one year ago.
 
CNN’s Political Ticker has the story:
 

"These banks that were too big to fail are now bigger," Barofsky said. "Government has sponsored and supported several mergers that made them larger and that guarantee, that implicit guarantee of moral hazard, the idea that the government is not going to let these banks fail, which was implicit a year ago, is now explicit, we've said it. So if anything, not only have there not been any meaningful regulatory reform to make it less likely, in a lot of ways, the government has made such problems more likely.
 
"Potentially we could be in more danger now than we were a year ago," he added.

It seems the only thing Washington is good at is spending your money. There seems to be less than zero fiscal responsibility in Washington right now. With historic deficit and debt numbers, with Medicare and Social Security on the brink of insolvency, all they can think to do is pass a trillion-dollar government takeover of health care and a job killing cap-and-trade national energy tax. If we don’t get our fiscal house in order, future generations will surely inherit a broken nation.

The Treasury Department has reported that America faces a $43 trillion unfunded obligation in Social Security and Medicare benefits with 77 million retiring baby boomers and rising health care costs.

According to the CBO, paying for the promised benefits will eventually force Congress to impose a 63% income tax on the middle class and an 88% tax on the “wealthy.”

Yet, even as we try to figure out how to meet our current obligations, the President wants to create an additional health care entitlement and further increase spending elsewhere in the budget.

The Social Security trust fund will be exhausted by 2037, and the Medicare hospital trust fund will become insolvent by 2017 according to a report by the trustees of the two programs.  

In fact, next year – 2010 – Social Security’s costs will exceed it’s income.

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Thanks to the efforts of Senator John McCain, President Obama's nominee for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Craig Becker, has hit a road block in the confirmation process. Senator McCain currently has a legislative hold on the nomination, so 60 votes are needed before the Senate can proceed to an up-or-down vote on Becker.

This is crucial, because Becker is yet another Obama nominee with views too extreme for mainstream America. Mr. Becker, who is associate general counsel at the SEIU (Service Employees International Union), ACORN’s Siamese-twin-like ally, is a staunch advocate for "card check," which would take away the secret ballot for American workers.

Perhaps worst of all, Becker has written that the NLRB should be able to enact card check even without Congressional action.  Unions could get what they want without Members of Congress having to face the music from their constituents.

According to the Wall Street Journal, "In a 1993 Minnesota Law Review article, written when he was a UCLA professor, Mr. Becker argued for rewriting current union-election rules in favor of labor.  And he suggested the NLRB could do so by regulatory fiat, without a vote in Congress."

In essence, he’d strip American workers of the secret ballot and Congress would be entirely unaccountable to the American people for doing so!

If card check passed, intimidation and harassment would run rampant in the workplace when voting to unionize. The right to a secret ballot is as American as it gets, and to take that privilege away for union gains is simply wrong. The decision about whether to unionize is a serious one and the process should be conducted with safeguards in place.

There's a lot of talk out there about ACORN being stripped of their federal funding, and restricted from receiving federal funds in the future. Sadly, this couldn't be further from the truth.

Here's what really happened:

On October 1, 2009, the President signed a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep government programs running at their current spending levels for one month.  This was necessary because Congress has not yet passed the annual appropriations bills which fund all government programs into the new fiscal year, which began October 1st.

In the Conference Report accompanying that bill, Congress included the following provision in Division B which prohibited ACORN from accessing federal funding:  

Sec. 163. None of the funds made available by this joint resolution or any prior Act may be provided to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, or allied organizations.

However, the CR expires on October 31, 2009:

DIVISION B--CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS RESOLUTION, 2010

Division B provides continuing appropriations for all agencies and activities that would be covered by the regular fiscal year 2010 appropriations bills, until enactment of the applicable regular appropriations bill, or until October 31, 2009, whichever occurs first.

Congress can pass another CR if it hasn’t finished passing the spending bills.  That CR would also have an expiration date of a matter of days or weeks or maybe months.  But, unless that CR includes the same language as Sec. 163, money will flow right back to ACORN on November 1st.

Even if Congress passes its appropriations bills before November 1st, unless they include that language, ACORN will be eligible for funding again.  And, remember in that case, the language has to be in all of the bills.  There are 12 appropriations bills, each funding different government agencies and programs.  Adding the prohibition language to, say, the Transportation funding bill doesn’t stop ACORN from accessing Housing funds.

And, even if Congress were to include that language in all 12 appropriations bills, that ACORN-prohibition language would expire on September 30th – the final day of Fiscal Year 2010.

The only way to ensure that ACORN is barred from federal funds across the board and for more than a brief time is for the White House to suspend and bar ACORN from federal funds.  It doesn’t have to take an act of Congress.

Late last week we got word from Speaker Pelosi that more stimulus funding is being considered to get the economy back on track. Seems that the $787 billion ($1.1 trillion with interest) that you ponied up earlier this year just isn't getting the job done. But, honestly, we shouldn’t be surprised by this response – not when tax-and-spend-and-borrow liberals are in charge of everything from the White House to the Capitol.

More government spending and borrowing to boost our economy is like trying to dig ourselves out of a hole in the sand. When all is said and done, not only have we made no progress, but we’re further from our objective then when we first started. And, with a greater debt for our kids to boot.

Instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on government giveaways in Stimulus, Part 1, the government should have focused on giving private business - big and small – a helping hand to create jobs. Jobs are what we need now to turn our economy around - and you don't do that by creating new government programs. You do that by allowing businesses to bring on more employees and grow the economy. But, sadly, it seems this Congress has yet to learn its lesson and is barreling toward Stimulus, Part 2.

Pretend for a second you work for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and you have a certain amount of federal grant money to distribute to fire departments and first responders throughout the country to enhance fire prevention and fire safety. In Louisiana, you have several fire departments applying for funding --in fact, more than you have money to disburse. You would think actual first responders would have precedent over, say, ACORN?  Wouldn’t you?

Well, apparently, that makes too much sense for the federal government when it comes to fire prevention in Louisiana.

According to the Washington Times, "nearly $1 million in Homeland Security funding typically earmarked for fire departments has been awarded to ACORN."  The Times goes on to say, "It was one of only three such grants issued to the state and made up almost 80 percent of the firefighting money earmarked for Louisiana...."

Thankfully, U.S. Senator David Vitter (R-LA) is all over this and has already requested that the grant be rescinded and given to someone with "expertise in this area."

It's not like there was a shortage of fire departments applying for the funding.  As the Times reports:

"One such group might have been the St. Tammany Parish Fire District No. 3, which applied for a $120,000 grant to purchase smoke alarms for low-income families after a January fire killed four children in a home that had no working detectors.

“’We wanted to buy smoke detectors to spread to homes all over the community to prevent that from happening again,' Chief Charles Flynn said in an interview Tuesday.

"'I have no problem with not getting a grant, I've lost grants before,' said Chief Flynn, one of the fire officials who complained to Mr. Vitter in a letter.

"'My issue is ACORN in New Orleans. Their mission statement says nothing about fire safety or fire prevention. It bothered me that ACORN got $1 million and there are so many smaller and bigger departments that have a need for that money.'

"The Monroe Fire Department was the only squad in Louisiana to receive a grant and will be awarded $192,000. The Louisiana State Fire Marshal's Office will receive $62,000.

"ACORN received $997,402, slightly less than the maximum allowable grant of $1 million. A total of $35 million was available for the grants project to fire districts across the country this year."

The announcement of this grant came after House and Senate votes to cut ACORN off.  But, it just goes to show you, the House and Senate voting to cut off funding to ACORN is nothing but a show until the President either signs it into law or he uses his authority to bar ACORN from federal programs and funds. The money is still flowing … and apparently it’s flowing from even the most unusual of sources.

Despite Congress’ mere lip service to defunding ACORN, the organization remains under intense scrutiny, and more and more entities are distancing themselves from this tarnished group. The latest:  In the latest round of allocations from the National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling program, ACORN Housing Corp. received no federal funding.

The Wall Street Journal reports that last year, ACORN “was allocated federal funds that could total as much as about $25 million under the program.…”  This year, however, it appears that NeighborWorks America which allocates the money is waiting to see what happens, if anything, given the current scrutiny ACORN faces.

If only Congress could take such meaningful action.  While both the Senate and House did take votes to strip ACORN of its funding, having two votes on two entirely different bills in two different chambers against ACORN looks good, but accomplishes nothing when all is said and done.  It’s good PR, but little more than that.

This is all the more reason why President Obama must immediately use his authority to suspend all federal agencies from doing business with ACORN. The evidence is ample, but it seems the motivation is lacking on the President’s part to do so. This group should not be allowed its continued use of our hard-earned tax dollars to perpetuate their scandalous work. It’s just common sense.

Just in case you didn’t realize it, Washington has a spending problem. And this problem paves the way for a myriad of dismal scenarios. Last month, the White House released updated budget numbers that are downright scary. The Obama Administration is projecting a federal deficit of $1.6 trillion this year and his budget would create $9 trillion in budget deficits over the next decade--more debt than America accumulated from the Presidencies of George Washington to George W. Bush combined (1789 through 2008). And this is using President Obama’s own estimates.

Others like the Heritage Foundation find that the President’s budget will likely produce $13 trillion in deficit spending over the next 10 years--nearly $4 trillion more than the Administration forecast. Why is that? Well, according to Heritage, “the White House figures are based on unrealistic estimates of discretionary spending, interest payments, and interest rates. The White House also used budget gimmicks to hide the full cost of certain entitlements and failed to account for the full costs of cap-and-trade energy legislation and health care reform.”  

But regardless of whether it is $9 trillion or $13 trillion, it’s a heck of a lot of money we don’t have. And our nation’s debt now sits at well over $11 trillion, closer to $12 trillion, actually, the highest it’s ever been in our nation’s history.

I’ve made an update to my congressional website and have posted a debt clock so you can see for yourself the way our government is recklessly spending so much of your hard-earned money. If our federal government doesn’t kick its spending addiction, our nation will be in a world of trouble. And its future generations that will pay the price.

It's amazing to watch the Democrat power players in Washington turning a blind eye to the ACORN controversy, hoping that it disappears in the next news cycle. Unfortunately for them, this ACORN scandal isn't going away, nor should it. When an organization with such a checkered past of nefarious activity is eligible to receive $10 billion dollars in taxpayer funding, and has already received tens of millions, you would think that all legislators, regardless of political party, would want to shut off the funding faucet once and for all.

But, here's what we're hearing from the Democrat majority:
 
    * President Obama told ABC's "This Week" in an interview broadcast Sunday, "Frankly, it's not really something I've followed closely. I didn't even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money."

    * According to the Hill newspaper, Senate Majority Reader Harry Reid "dismissed a suggestion...that he sanction a probe into the organization's business practices."

    * Yesterday, Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank and Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers wrote a letter to Daniel Mullholland, Director of the Congressional Research Service (CRS), to ask them to investigate ACORN’s recent activities, specifically to "research and report on the federal and state laws that could apply to such videotaping and distribution of conversations without the consent of all parties." So, when ACORN workers are caught on film giving legal advice on setting up an underage prostitution ring as a legitimate business, Chairmen Frank and Conyers think we should be investigating the investigators who broke the story?

While both the Senate and House recently took votes to strip ACORN of its funding, having two votes on two entirely different bills in two different chambers against ACORN looks good, but accomplishes nothing when all is said and done.  In fact, these votes haven’t stopped one dime from flowing to ACORN.

Rather than wait and hope the House and Senate come together and pass identical language, President Obama should immediately suspend all federal agencies from doing business with ACORN and using our hard-earned tax dollars to perpetuate their scandalous work.

Washington is on notice: The American people won’t be fooled.  They want ACORN off the government payroll.

Recently, efforts to audit the Federal Reserve have been gathering steam on both sides of the political aisle, as both Republicans and Democrats are expressing their frustrations with the nearly complete lack of transparency and accountability during an unprecedented time of activity from the Fed. Congressman Ron Paul has been calling for this for years, and his Federal Reserve Transparency Act, of which I'm a cosponsor, is expected to be examined during a full committee hearing of the Financial Services Committee this Friday.

Coincidentally, that same night, Dr. Paul is holding a student town hall at the University of Minnesota to discuss issues like this one.  And, I’m honored to have the opportunity to speak at it as well.  Congress is spending away these students’ future, and they need to be a part of this dialogue.

As a precursor to that hearing and that town hall, we get word today that the Federal Reserve has "rejected a request by Treasury Secretary Geithner for a public review of the central bank’s structure and governance."

Our government's spending and printing money like it’s being used for a board game, and we're bailing out Wall Street and Detroit to the tune of billions of dollars, the least the Federal Reserve can do is open up their doors a crack so taxpayers can take a peek at what they're doing with our money.

As it stands now, the Federal Reserve has very little, if any, accountability to the taxpayer. In the wake of Enron, Congress required corporate America to open its books to their shareholders, yet the Federal Reserve keeps the taxpayers in the dark. They need to be held to the same standard. It's simply common sense.

By having the government take over all federal student loan organizations, it would involve one of the largest expansions of a government program in recent memory. It would dismantle a system that has successfully served generations of Americans. Within a decade the Federal Direct Loan Program would be a trillion dollar operation, making it one of the biggest banks in the world. It would ultimately have responsibility for tens of millions of borrowers...
                       -- America's Student Loan Providers (July 21, 2009)

Another month, and another attempt by the Obama Administration to take over a successful portion of the private sector. Banks, cars, and now student loans. I'm beginning to see a trend here.

Today, the House will complete consideration of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009, otherwise known as the public option for higher education (not to be confused with the public option for health care -- but the similarities can't be overlooked). Advocates like the President maintain that if passed, this bill will bring a "level playing field"  between government and private options. Sound familiar?

However, history tells us that when it's all said and done, the only one left standing on the "level" playing field tends to be the government.

Ending private sector competition in the student loan industry and making the Direct Loan program the sole provider will kill jobs, and greatly expand the control of the federal government. The Federal Family Education Loans (FFEL) program has been the overwhelming choice for student and parents for the past 40 years. In fact, 78% of all new federal student loans from 2007-2008 were administered through this program. Yet, the government wants to end it. It doesn't make any sense.

If nothing else, this bill tells us one thing -- if the government can't succeed on its own merits, they'll eliminate the competition. That should concern us all.

Kudos to my colleague Ed Royce (R-CA) for sounding the alarm on the international battle to downgrade the dollar. I've said for months now that our penchant for massive spending and our sky-rocketing debt will come back to bite us and Congressman Royce provides evidence seconding that notion.

As he mentions in his recent post, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development has issued a report calling for the U.S. dollar to be replaced as the global reserve currency. This isn't the first we've heard of this.  Other nations, such as China, Russia, India, and Brazil, have been beating this drum for several months now. But this marks the first time the U.N. has jumped on board.

Unfortunately, our government is giving them their best rationalization for these ludicrous proposals. After all, our nation's debt, which is the money owed by our government, currently sits at the highest it's been in our nation's history, at $11.7 trillion. Couple that with our rising deficit which has well exceeded $1 trillion (another record) and is on its way to $2 trillion fast, and our debt becomes a far less attractive purchase to other nations.  China’s even voiced those concerns publicly.  Higher interest rates will be necessary to sell our debt abroad.   And we will soon be confronted with the growing threat of rising inflation - a devastating sign that our nation's economic fortunes are heading in the wrong direction.

This is real money we're talking about here, and your future. Fiscal responsibility must not be a campaign slogan.  It must be a fundamental tenant of our governing philosophy and economic well-being. The welfare of our children and grandchildren depends on it.

We need to give credit where credit is due. Today, the AP reports that acting under a tip from ACORN, authorities in Florida have arrested 11 individuals accused of falsifying hundreds of voter applications during a registration drive last year. According to the press report, "the suspects collectively turned in about 1,400 registration cards, of which 888 were later found to be faked."

While this was certainly a smart move on ACORN’s part to assist in this criminal investigation, this controversial organization is far too often implicated in these falsified voter registration activities.

In fact, over the years, ACORN and its employees have been the subject of investigations, indictments, and consent decrees in states all across the nation for election-related activities that run afoul of the law. Yet, since 1994, Congress has given it $53 million.  And, legislation passed this year alone will make billions potentially available to this organization.  Could Washington find no more worthy way to spend your money?

I put this to a vote by the House of Representatives with an amendment that said that organizations that have been indicted for voter registration fraud or who employee people who have been so indicted shouldn’t be eligible for taxpayer funding.  On a nearly party-line vote, my amendment failed.  Coincidently, that very week the vote took place, ACORN was hauled into court in two states for voter registration fraud.  If Congress cannot draw the line here, where will it draw the line on how it spends your money?

To add insult to injury, the U.S. Census Bureau has chosen to partner with ACORN for the 2010 census.  Their partnership program is meant to build confidence and trust in the census.  How can partnering with ACORN further these goals?  I am about to introduce the Census Improvement Act, which in part would prohibit ACORN or any organization which has been indicted for election law violations – or who employ individuals who have – from participating in the Planning Partnership Program for the 2010 Census. 

When your government gives out your money, the recipient must be trustworthy. Clearly, ACORN has a lot of work to do before they fit the bill.