It should come to no surprise that the House of Representatives have furthered the nationalization of American industry by wasting another $15 billion of tax money that doesn’t exist to bailout the gross mismanagement of the Big Three automakers and their blood sucking unions. Here is a list of how our Carolina representatives voted:
This comment was a great reason why Jack Spratt shouldn’t have been chosen to be part of Obama’s economic team and thank God wasn’t.
“This is not your typical business cycle recession, and there are no typical off-the-shelf solutions, or play-books to turn to,” Spratt said in a statement Monday afternoon. “We need policy-makers with seasoned judgment and keen vision, modern-day heirs of great economists, like Keynes, who are able to find their way to the source of these dismal problems and devise the right solutions.”
Keynesian ecnomics are pretty much what parts of the New Deal were all about and the Great Depression continued for seven years after FDR began implementing such programs. In essence, it was Roosevelt’s beliefs in Keynesian economics that kept preserved double digit unemployment rates, at times over 20% through the bulk of his presidency. Had we not been pulled into World War II by Japan the Depression would have undoubtedly lasted even longer.
Oh well, I guess we’re stuck with him another two years.
ROCK HILL — President-elect Barack Obama appears close to naming a former Clinton economic adviser to direct his budget office — a choice that would end speculation over whether U.S. Rep. John Spratt is a possibility for the job.
Obama has settled on Peter Orszag, who serves as chief of the Congressional Budget Office, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
The apparent decision means Spratt will keep the 5th District seat he’s held since 1982 — and hold onto his posts as budget committee chairman and second-ranking member on armed services.
John Spratt’s name is being floated for a post in the Obama administration that would take advantage of his economic expertise as chairman of the House Budget Committee.
Spratt is at the top of a list of three possible directors of the White House Office of Management and Budget, The Associated Press reported last week. The New York Times and other publications also have mentioned Spratt as a possible Obama appointee.
And when has Jack Spratt made any effort whatsoever to bring a balanced to the government during all of his years on the House Budget Committee? One thing is for certain, though, a Spratt appointment would put smiles on the eyes of House Republicans. Spratt’s district has been trending more and more Republican with each passing year. This would be a great pick up opportunity for the GOP.
The Herald interviewed Congressman John Spratt (D-SC-05 Rock Hill, Gaffney, Bennettsville) and Republican challenger Albert Spencer and asked them a few questions on the major issues in next week’s election.
Do you support raising taxes on families making more than $250,000?
John Spratt said, “This doesn’t become an issue until 2010 when the (Bush) tax breaks expire. In 2010, we’ll know then where the economy stands. If the stocks are way down, probably the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress will say it’s not the right time to tamper when the capital gains rates. Until we know what the economy is doing, that issue will be kicked down the road.”
Albert Spencer said, “I don’t support raising taxes on anybody. I think we need to lower taxes. Too many of our paychecks, particularly (in) middle class families, goes to taxes. If we start taxing them in addition to what’s going on with the economy, we’re just going to see continued downfall.”
I don’t believe for one second that Barack Obama will wait until 2010 to raise taxes. It’s not possible for him to do so if he wants to deliver all of his new Socialism. Spratt knows this. Why is he being dishonest about it? Where does Spratt stand on raising taxes? He never answered the question.
What changes, if any, would you make to President Bush’s signature education initiative, No Child Left Behind?
John Spratt said, “I would allow a lot more flexibility with respect to adequate yearly progress. Number two, I would fund it more substantially than it has been. That was part of the deal originally. The program has not been robustly funded.”
Albert Spencer said, “A lot of teachers are telling me there’s too much paperwork involved. We need to look at how we can reduce paperwork and still get the intent across. When the paperwork becomes time-consuming, this becomes a negative. A lot of our teachers have large classes, and it’s very difficult for an educator to do everything in 24 hours a day.”
Both of them gave the wrong answer. No Child Left Behind needs to be completely repealed. It has done nothing to improve education in this country; it has only bogged it down with Federal interference and bureaucracy. The Federal government does not have any Constitutional legitimacy to be involved in education. It is a state and local function.
The Senate as you are well aware by now passed a sweetened version of the bailout Tuesday evening. The House voted again today and complied, as I suspected they would. So the dirty deed is now done. Bear in mind that this bill was rife with waist added by the Senate on Tuesday night that had nothing to do with the economical turmoil.
$2 million tax benefit for makers of wooden arrows for children
$100 million tax break to benefit auto racetrack owners
$192 million in rebates on excise taxes for the Puerto Rican and Virgin Islands rum industry
$148 million in tax relief for U.S. wool fabric producers
$49 million tax benefit for fishermen and other plaintiffs who sued over the 1989 tanker Exxon Valdez spill.
People, are you not outraged? If so, ask yourself why you might be going to the voting booth in November to return the same people to office who just voted for one of the largest Federal power grabs in American history and threw almost a trillion dollars of money we don’t have down the toilet. Are those of you in South Carolina prepared to give Lindsey Graham another six years? Think twice. He’s one of the culprits. Richard Burr also voted for it on behalf of North Carolina. Senators Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) opposed the measure. Additionally, both Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama voted for the bailout as did VP candidate Joe Biden.
I can’t get the vote information from the House yet. The Web site must be getting swamped with traffic because it’s timing out on me, but I’ll post it as soon as I have it available.
Update: I now have the House roll. Sue Myrick and Gresham Barrett flipped on this, voting for the bailout today, whereas they voted against it before.
As I’m sure you have heard by now, the $700 billion bailout failed to pass the House of Representatives today by a mere 13 votes. I was opposed to this bailout, so I am rather pleased, for now. They’ll try something again. I just have a huge issue with this theory that corporations can privatize all of their gains but socialize their losses. That just doesn’t seem quite right to me.
This video pretty much sums up my thoughts.
So how did your representative vote? Did they vote to use your tax dollars to bail out Wall Street fat cats or did they vote to save your tax dollars?
Voting for the bailout were:
Bob Etheridge (D-NC-02)
David Price (D-NC-04)
Mel Watt (D-NC-12)
Brad Miller (D-NC-13)
Henry Brown (R-SC-01)
Joe Wilson (R-SC-02)
Bob Inglis (R-SC-04)
John Spratt (D-SC-05)
Jim Clyburn (D-SC-06)
Voting against the heinous bailout were:
G.K. Butterfield (D-NC-01)
Walter Jones (R-NC-03)
Virginia Foxx (R-NC-05)
Howard Coble (R-NC-06)
Mike McIntyre (D-NC-07)
Robin Hayes (R-NC-08)
Sue Myrick (R-NC-09)
Patrick McHenry (R-NC-10)
Heath Shuler (D-NC-11)
Gresham Barrett (R-SC-03)
Boy, the South Carolina delegation sure sucks a nut. David Price is no surprise. He loves using your money to give special favors to all of his corporate friends. Same with Henry Brown. I expected Watt to be on the yea list as well because he is a Socialist. Overall it looks to be just about split down the middle. Now you know who is on your side and who is pining for the Rockefellers.
The U.S. Senate today overwhelmingly sent President Bush a spending bill of $634 billion to keep the government “operating beyond the current budget year.” If only that were the case. This budget passage, as every other, consisted of a hogfest of a Congressional pen of pigs in starched white shirts feeding from the trough that you and I provided. This thing is stuffed with thousands of earmarks in addition to $25 billion of taxpayer funded loans to help bailout the automakers. The bill was presented in its final form from the House to the Senate as H.R. 2638, Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2008, sponsored by none other than our very own Representative David Price (D-NC-04).
How did our representatives vote? As usual, in the Senate Jim DeMint stood up and vocally opposed the legislation. Lindsey Graham joined him in voting against it. Richard Burr made a rare and unusual move, voting Present, Giving Live Pair. What this means is that somebody else who not present at the vote and knew they wouldn’t be who planned on voting the opposite way Burr was made a deal with him to vote present so that the outcome wouldn’t be altered by their absence. In other words, for the sake of argument, let’s say Burr was hypothetically going to vote No, but John McCain was absent and was planning to vote Yes which would cancel out Burr’s vote anyway. McCain would ask Burr to vote Present then so that the same result is produced. As I said, this is just a hypothetical. Burr may have intended to vote Yes and made a deal with an absent Senator who wanted to vote against it. And we can’t forget Liddy Dole who as usual voted for her pork.
In the House we had the following voting for the waste:
This whole controversy with Don Fowler’s Gustav remarks today got me thinking. Fowler was embarrassingly forced into this issue because of a private conversation he had with a South Carolina Congressman while on a flight coming back from the Democratic National Convention in Denver to Charlotte. Whoever the individual was sitting behind Congressman Spratt secretly videotaped the conversation and then anonymously posted it on YouTube.
So the question is, in the information age do we have a reasonable expectation of privacy anymore?
Hat tip to RedState on this one. What a gem. Someone on the plane sitting behind Former South Carolina Democratic Party chairman Don Fowler and my Congressman John Spratt (D-SC-05) caught on tape a conversation between the two of them in which Fowler laughs about Hurricane Gustav hitting New Orleans at the same time the Republican National Convention is scheduled to start. You can hear him joking about how it must mean that God’s on their (the Democrats) side.
ABC News’ Teddy Davis Reports: Former DNC Chairman Don Fowler apologized on Sunday for joking in a private conversation that the timing of Hurricane Gustav demonstrates that God is on the side of the Democrats.
“If this offended anybody, I personally apologize,” Fowler told ABC News. “It was a mistake, and it was a satirical statement made in jest. And one that I clearly don’t believe.”
Fowler was secretly recorded by the person sitting behind him while flying from Denver, Colo., to Charlotte, N.C., following the Democratic National Convention. His conversation with Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., was anonymously posted to YouTube and highlighted by RedState.com, a conservative blog.
“One doesn’t anticipate that one’s private conversation will be surreptitiously taped by some right-wing nutcase,” said Fowler. “But that’s the nature of what we’re dealing with.”
My “esteemed” Congressman Jack Spratt (D-SC-05) who most certainly has had his share of fat, is running around bragging about the record $3.1 trillion budget that the Democrat Controlled Congress has passed in Washington. This is a reckless and irresponsible budget for a great many reasons.
One, it eliminates cuts to Medicare and Medicaid which are both a huge drain on our tax dollars and becoming more of a financial burden on the Federal government with each passing year. These entitlement programs need to be drastically cut back or they are going to consume a piece of the pie far too large for us to sustain in the not so distant future. The budget also expands SCHIP, another Socialist entitlement program that addicts our newborn citizens to the government nanny state the moment they exit the womb.
Spratt claims that we will have a balanced budget by 2012 with a large surplus, but that is also a flawed assessment. This balance will only be achieved if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire which will result in the largest tax increase in American history, heavily hitting the middle class and if the are no further military expenses regarding operations in Iraq and Afghanistan after 2009. If John McCain becomes President that is out the window and if Barack Obama becomes President it’s not likely to happen despite what he says.
This is a feckless spending plan that throws the baby out with the bath water.
A month before an Internet video brought worldwide attention to the issue, an Army health inspection in March recommended cleanup of mold growing in aging barracks on Fort Bragg.
Inspectors with Womack Army Medical Center’s found that “mold growth was visible on hallway walls in various places and along the metal door framing of most rooms†of barracks occupied by the 11th Quartermaster Company, 82nd Sustainment Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, according to documents obtained by The Fayetteville Observer.
The barracks next door didn’t fare much better, according to a YouTube video last week by a soldier’s father. That video, depicting peeling paint, mold on the ceiling and raw sewage, prompted outcry from top military and political leaders.
There is no justification as to why these barracks were ever allowed to reach the condition they were in. There is simply no excuse for this and it should have been dealt with a long time ago. Our military is continuously treated like second class citizens by our government and it goes beyond all acceptability.
For the record, I wrote both of my senators, Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint and my Congressman, John Spratt, regarding this issue. I received only one response. That was a personal phone call from a staffer in Senator DeMint’s Washington office. That showed me who cares about their constituents’ concerns and who doesn’t.
After weeks of hedging, Albert Spencer made it official Saturday: He’ll run for the U.S. House seat held by 13-term incumbent John Spratt.
Spencer filed paperwork Saturday with the state Republican Party. Spratt filed last week. Neither candidate made a formal announcement.
In 2004, Spencer raised no money and didn’t buy any advertising, yet managed to earn 37 percent of the vote in a year when President Bush headlined the top of the Republican ticket.
It’s good that the race will be contested. No incumbent should waltz right back into office, but if Spencer is going to run the same kind of race and not raise money and basically not try then why the hell bother? He is just going to allow his name to be filler on the ballot since no serious candidate could be recruited.
It’s not surprising, though, the GOP would have that trouble. There is only one person who has the power to turn this seat from D to R and that is Congressman Spratt. His retirement will flip the seat.
While all six of the state’s congressmen face challengers, none of the races will be repeats as the all the major party losers in the general election of 2006 did not file to run for Congress again.
Fifth District Congressman John Spratt went the longest without a challenger. Republican Albert F. Spencer didn’t file to run against the 13-term Democrat until Saturday.
Spencer and Spratt have met before. In 2004, Spencer got 37 percent of the vote. A much better financed and supported Republican challenger in 2006, Ralph Norman, received about 43 percent of the vote against Spratt.
The 5th District stretches along the state’s northern border and rural Pee Dee areas - from Newberry and Cherokee counties more than 130 miles east to Dillon County.
The most crowded race is in the 1st District, which stretches from the Grand Strand to Charleston. Four-term incumbent Henry Brown will face Katherine Jenerette and Paul V. Norris in the Republican primary, while Linda Ketner and Ben Frasier compete for the Democratic nomination.
In the 2nd District, incumbent Joe Wilson will go for his fourth full term. He faces Phil Black in the Republican primary, while Rob Miller and Blaine Lotz are running for the Democratic nomination. That district runs from Beaufort County north into the northern and western suburbs of Columbia.
Gresham Barrett is seeking a fourth term in the 3rd District in the northwest part of the state. He will face Democrat Jane Dyer in the general election.
Fourth District incumbent Bob Inglis is trying for a third term since returning to Congress in 2004. He will face Charles Jeter in the Republican primary, while Bryan McCanless, Paul H. Corden and Ted Christian face off in the Democratic primary.
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn will run for a ninth term in the majority-black 6th District. He will take on Republican Nancy Harrelson in the general election.
Democratic candidates are flocking to South Carolina because its January primary will be one of the first in the nation. They are getting a receptive audience in South Carolina by talking about improving health care and providing more jobs, Spratt said. “That’s clearly what people wanted to hear.”
But during the Bush administration, federal debt has grown from just under $6 trillion to nearly $10 trillion, Spratt said. Paying the interest on that debt dwarfs other priorities like education, veterans’ benefits and homeland security. Discretionary federal spending on programs, other than defense, is dropping.
What would Spratt, who has not endorsed a candidate, tell a Democratic presidential hopeful?
“Don’t promise too much because you may have to fulfill those promises,” he said. Paying for new programs “will be hard to do.”
But he said candidates should not talk about tax increases, either.
The first thing a new administration should do is overhaul the tax code to clean out a lot of special-interest tax deductions, credits and exemptions that have accumulated in the past 20 years, he said.
“We haven’t had a closet cleaning since 1986,” he said.
I agree with Spratt is saying to a degree. Obviously all these promises of Socialism will be fiscally devastating to this country. He is also correct on the tax code overhaul, but I would rather see it flattened and lowered across the board altogether and I am certain that is not what the Democrats, who have never met a tax increase they didn’t love, have in mind.
Tolls may be required to build Interstate 73 and 74, the chairman of the House Budget Committee said today.
“I don’t see any way to get this to fruition unless it is a toll road,” Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., told the National I-73/74 Corridor Association, a coalition of business and civic leaders.
The association is in Washington to push construction of new Interstate highways from Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Wilmington, N.C., through North Carolina, South Carolina, southwest Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio and Michigan.
