Obama is not a Muslim. Because with all the pork that is in this “stimulus” bill, he would have been executed a long time ago.
As promised in the earlier related post, I added up all the non-economy stimulus pork that I found in a 30-minute look up and came up with:
$7,723,000,000
Again, there is much more pork in this bill. I just got tired after page 200-250.
To put this figure in perspective, while we are being told that taking care of park trails, ensuring Americans have digital TV controller boxes or funding another effort to stop smoking is something that cannot wait, take a look at the TOTAL city budgets of the following cities.
Philadelphia – $3.97 billion
Baltimore – $2.921 billion
Washington D.C. – $6.4 billion (proposed 3/08)
Obama back in November ’08 from The Politico:
President-elect Barack Obama is vowing to watch spending carefully even as he plans to push for a stimulus package of $500 billion or more.
“We want to put money into health care modernization that can help us save money over the long term,” Obama said in response to a question at a news conference in Chicago on Tuesday. “We don’t want to continue programs that aren’t working and making people healthier. The same is true for education. The same is true with the Defense Department. The same is true in social spending.”
In a red flag for lobbyists, Obama warned: “Just because a program, a special-interest tax break, or corporate subsidy is hidden in this year’s budget does not mean that it will survive the next. The old ways of Washington simply can’t meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.”
[...]
In opening remarks, Obama said: “Budget reform is not an option. It is an imperative.”
[...]
“We cannot sustain a system that bleeds billions of taxpayer dollars on programs that have outlived their usefulness, or exist solely because of the power of a politician, lobbyist, or interest group,” he said. “We simply cannot afford it.”
Here is the tune the Obama administration is playing today~
Jake Tapper of ABC—quickly becoming the toughest questioner in the White House press pool—pointed out that Obama managed to get Rep. Henry Waxman to remove $200 million in the bill set aside for family-planning services; he asked White House press secretary Robert Gibbs why the president can’t do it for other porky items, like the funds set aside for “smoking cessation” efforts. (Some portion of $500 million, by my reading.)
“Let’s focus on the larger picture” is Gibbs’ mantra. “If we get focused on this number and that number, and two-one-hundreths of one percent of the spending . . . while we’re discussing this, in the past forty-eight [hours], 70,000 people have gotten a pink slip.”
Tapper: “Why not take the money marked for ‘smoking cessation’ and give it to people who are out of work?”
Gibbs: “The vast majority of this bill does that . . . We can’t afford to wait. We have to act.” (source)
Sorry, Mr. Gibbs, but the ” two-one-hundreths of one percent” as you call it can cover the entire budget of at least two major US cities for the year.
As I pointed out earlier, just the few non-economic stimulus items I found in this bill cost more than the budgets of some of America’s most troubled cities. If we have money to burn on bee research and walking trails, why not just hand it over to cities?
This is not about putting Obama on some ridiculous time table. Instead, this has everything to do with holding him responsible to the commitment he made regarding spending.
