The Senate Is Set To Vote On Yet Another $26.1 BILLION Bailout Package! This Time For The States That Are Declaring A Fiscal Emergency!!!

This was the best cartoon I could find that perfectly described the bailouts. The bailouts are never going to end. The beast is going to want to constantly be fed. Expect the bailouts to continue ad infinitum and beyond! Unless of course, Washington decides to get real and face the TRUTH about our situation. That is the ONLY way we can fix the problem is to identify it. Until then Washington will continue using band-aids on a gaping wound. Temporary worthless bandages, delaying the inevitable and making the situation WORSE in the long-run!

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Stimulated Yet?

Senate Set to Vote on $26.1B Bailout Package for States

written by Politico

Sunday August 1, 2010

With a Senate vote slated for Monday evening, the White House shows signs of a late-breaking push behind a $26.1 billion aid package to help state and local governments cope with revenue shortfalls due to the continuing housing crisis and slow economic recovery.

Last year’s giant Recovery Act helped fill this gap, but as these stimulus funds run out, Democrats fear more state layoffs, beginning with teachers just months before November elections. Cash-strapped governors are promised $16.1 billion to pay Medicaid bills next year and ease their budget situation; another $10 billion in education assistance would go to school boards to help with teacher hiring—a top priority for Education Secy. Arne Duncan.

“There is a tremendous amount at stake here,” Duncan told POLITICO. And even with the House gone until mid-September, he insisted that Senate passage would give local school boards “a real sense of hope” that federal dollars will be coming in time to avoid layoffs impacting tens of thousands of teachers.

The package, which has received little attention to date, was filed only last Thursday by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in what seemed more an effort then to disentangle the teacher-Medicaid issues from a small business bill, which the White House wants badly.

Monday’s vote to cut off debate will require 60 votes—a high bar to meet and one that will require Republican help.

Toward this end, Reid offset the full cost through a combination of foreign tax credit provisions and $17.1 billion in savings chiefly from cuts to food stamps and prior appropriations. The Medicaid assistance, which extends a program begun under the Recovery Act, is designed now to phase out in the first six months of 2011—something recommended by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine.)

At least one member of Reid’s own caucus, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), said through a spokesman that he is still undecided. And the package has come up in such a low-profile, almost haphazard way that its political prospects are difficult to read.

President Barack Obama made no mention of it in his Saturday radio address—instead focusing on the small business bill itself. Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell, a huge champion of the Medicaid funds, didn’t mention it in a Sunday appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“There is a push,” confirmed one administration official Monday, but Obama has yet to make calls. And the most forceful voice for the administration is still Duncan, a likable young contemporary of the president from Chicago but someone who has been undercut on the teacher issue in the past by White House indifference.

In fact, from the standpoint of many in Congress, the administration has badly managed the teacher aid issue for months and will be lucky to salvage any funds now.

Despite Duncan’s unabashed support, no budget request has ever been submitted. And when House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-Wis.) attempted to deal with the issue as part of a recent Afghanistan war funding bill, he ran into a bitter fight with White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel, including a White House threaten to veto the measure if it included the domestic aid.

“That wasn’t helpful,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D—Cal) told POLITICO this past week, when asked in an interview about the White House posture in the veto skirmish. And for Duncan, a second chance to secure the teacher money now is also a chance to restore some of his own—and the president’s—credibility. “I’ve talked to Rahm. Everyone’s working it,” the secretary said when pressed on the White House commitment.

Nonetheless, a victory Monday would be a big upset in the current political climate.

Tensions are running high with the Maine Republican delegation. Sen. Olympia Snowe took Reid to task last week for his handling of the small business bill. And Republicans would argue that the Medicaid funding would have a better chance of passage without the teachers aid included.

With senators anxious to go home for the summer, time is a priority. Reid still has a shot at a deal on the small business aid bill, and under one scenario, a loss Monday might make that easier and allow him to come up later in the week with a straight Medicaid package, stripped of the teacher funds.