ABC – Bill Clinton: Obama Should Sound More Hopeful
Former President Clinton had some advice for the current occupant of the White House in his appearance on Good Morning America today – cheer up, dude.
“I just would like him to end by saying that he is hopeful,” Clinton said in the interview that dwelled on the issue of President Obama’s predictions of disaster for the economy. But it wasn’t all critique. Clinton, who cast himself as a mix of Reagan and FDR with a Hot Springs attitude, said he understood that Obama has no choice but to spend big and wreck the budget for years to come.
“‘I think it’s absolutely the right thing to do,’ he said. ‘And I’m a fiscal conservative. You know, I balanced the budget. I paid $600 billion down on the debt to the American people. I don’t like deficit spending. He has no choice. The economy is contracting. He has to prop it up.’”
Wall Street Journal — Policing TARP Proves Tricky
Writer Susan Schmidt nicely captures just what a seat-of-the-pants operation the bank bailout has been. Schmidt provides the details of the group that has been and will be providing the oversight for the program. The chairwoman is Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, who, along with her staff of former Obama campaign aides, is examining how the $700 billion program is working. The Republicans on the congressionally mandated panel panel say they’ve been shut out of the process and hint that the chairwoman aspires to more than just oversight. Her comments did little to diminish that suggestion.
“Ms. Warren made clear she sees her mission as much broader than mere oversight. ‘What we learn is the market, when left to its own devices, moves toward boom and bust,’ she said.”
New York Times — Health Care Industry in Talks to Shape Policy
With so many moving parts of the domestic agenda, it’s been hard to track them all. Writer Robert Pear
Found that Health Care reform, though, has been chugging right along in Ted Kennedy’s conference room.
The working group of lobbyists and congressional bill drafters has apparently already reached its conclusion. There will be new government programs and you’ll be forced to have health insurance the same way driver’s are forced to have auto insurance. The team leaked a memo to Pear laying out the plan.
“While there was some diversity of views,” it said, “the sense of the room is that an individual obligation to purchase insurance should be part of reform if that obligation is coupled with effective mechanisms to make coverage meaningful and affordable.”
Wall Street Journal — Congress Turns to Budget Bill
Writer Naftali Bendavid gives us a new way to understand the size of the spending spree in Washington – the looming fight to pass the regular, old, plain-Jane $410 billion budget that will get the government to the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. Congress wouldn’t give President Bush a full budget – only defense and veterans spending – and has been limping along until now.
The “omnibus” bill, which is much more earmarked and far less understood by the electorate than the stimulus package. If a fight breaks out over unpleasant budget provisions – especially major expansions of social programs – it could complicate the rest of President Obam’s ambitious agenda.
“The vote on the new budget comes as lawmakers are still confronting voter anger over a $700 billion financial-services bailout. Also, Mr. Obama plans to deliver next Thursday his budget blueprint for fiscal 2010. On top of all that, the administration is expected to ask Congress in coming months for additional war and bank-bailout funding.”
Washington Times — States prepare to combat stimulus strings
Writer David Dickson writes about a weird movement going on in a diverse group of states around the country – legislatures are passing resolutions reasserting the terms of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution (the one that reverts all powers not enumerated in the document to the states individually).
While fears of stimulus mandates that will go unfunded are part of the motivation, bipartisan distrust for the federal leviathan seems to be part of the movement.
“The sentiments to declare themselves legally independent from Washington have swept across as many as a dozen states, renewing a debate over so-called unfunded mandates that last raged in the 1990s. The states question whether the U.S. government can force states to take actions without paying for them or impose conditions on states if they accept certain federal funding.”
