Most of the news out of DC today concerns lots and lots of money – Your money, my money, our money, your neighbors money. The House approved a $1.1 trillion spending bill without any GOP votes. It’s not clear whether the Senate will have the 60 votes necessary to shove the massive spending bill through the chamber.
The 1,088-page, $1.1 trillion measure would provide $447 billion in operating budgets for 10 Cabinet departments, awarding increases averaging almost 10 percent. On top of that comes more than $600 billion in payments for federal benefit programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
The 221-202 vote to approve the House-Senate compromise bill sends it to the Senate, which immediately voted 56-43 to begin debate. That tally could mean trouble for the bill since it is less than the 60 votes needed to break a GOP filibuster.
In addition, after promising that we wouldn’t lose money as a result of the bailouts, the Treasury is now telling us we’ll need to spend more money to be able to stop spending money, and, oh yeah, we probably won’t get al that money back after all.
Further, Mr. Geithner said an extension of the program is necessary to facilitate the government’s successful exit from it. He repeated several points mentioned in a letter he sent this week authorizing the TARP extension and continued to trumpet the better-than-expected returns taxpayers are earning on parts of the program.
However, he acknowledged the possibility that some painful losses could be ahead. “There is a significant likelihood that we will not be repaid for the full value of our investments in AIG, GM, and Chrysler,” Mr. Geithner said.
In world affairs, dissidents in Iran are still fleeing the country to escape the nation’s continuing crackdown following June’s controversial elections.
The United Nations says more than 4,200 Iranians world-wide have sought refugee status since Iran’s controversial June presidential vote and bloody street violence. This provincial Turkish town — near the famed carved-rock dwellings of Cappadocia that harbored outcasts in millennia past — is home to 543 Iranians seeking asylum.
After sometimes spending weeks hiding in and hopping between safe houses, Iranians have turned up in countries as far away as Australia, Canada and Sweden. They typically seek refugee status.
“What good can a lawyer do in Iran if she is in jail?” says Nikahang Kousar, an Iranian political cartoonist in Toronto who formed an “underground railroad” of sorts to advise and assist other Iranians trying to leave Iran.
Meanwhile, in the face of such continuing world threats, President Obama took to the world stage to give a speech that former UN Ambassador John Bolton called “extremely naive.”
“It was a very naïve, Wilsonian speech, and very revealing of Obama’s foreign policy,” says Bolton. “Overall, it was so apologetic for the actions of prior administrations, in an effort to distance Obama from them, that it became yet another symbol of American weakness in the wake of the president’s decision to abandon missile sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, and his recent manifest hesitation over what to do in Afghanistan.”
“The most significant point of the speech was how the president put Israel on the chopping block in a variety of references, from calling Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegitimate to talking about ending ‘the occupation that began in 1967.’ That implies that he supports going back to 1967 borders,” says Bolton. “Obama has a very tough road ahead. He is frequently taking the side of the Palestinians, who don’t have a competent leader who can make hard decisions and compromises in the future.”
Have a great weekend. We’ll see you on Monday.
