Unemployment Extension Passed Paid for by the Taxpayers.

Unemployment Filibuster Broken - ABC News

Boosted by the swearing-in of new West Virginia Sen. Carte Goodwin, the Senate today voted to restore and extend jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed, ending a lengthy stalemate.

By a vote of 60-40 the Senate succeeded in passing the jobless aid measure just minutes after Goodwin formally became a member of the Senate. Democratic Senators in the chamber erupted in applause when Goodwin cast the decisive vote.

For weeks the Senate had been locked in a standoff on helping the nation's jobless, with both parties supporting an extension of the benefits but disagreeing on how to pay for them. Democrats argued that helping 2.5 million unemployed Americans is an emergency as the country rebounds from recession, but Republicans balked at the bill's $34 billion price tag, contending that adding tens of billions of dollars to the government's soaring deficit is fiscally irresponsible.

Republicans failed on four occasions to offset the cost of the bill with funds from the government's massive stimulus program, while Democrats struck out five times in their attempts to pass the measure. Two Republicans -- Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins -- today sided with Democrats, while Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson backed the GOP's approach.

Harry Reid knows what is best for you.


Dems refuse compromise to extend unemployment benefits

Democrats have been painting Republicans as unsympathetic to the long-term unemployed who will be unable to collect benefits, but Democratic leaders have rejected several offers by the GOP to vote for the bill if at least some of it is paid for.

"My concern is that the Democrats are more interested in having this issue to demagogue for political gamesmanship than they are in simply passing the benefits extension," said Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, who offered a deal that was rejected by Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Voinovich told Reid he would vote for extending benefits if at least half of the extension could be paid for with unused money from the $787 billion stimulus package.

After the bill failed, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., offered a compromise that would extend benefits for two months and pay for it fully with unused stimulus funding. But Reid turned it down.
THE DEMOCRATS WANT THIS AS A POLITICAL TOOL.


Earlier this week President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid both blasted Republicans for blocking the jobless help.


"It's time to stop holding workers laid off in this recession hostage to Washington politics. It's time to do what's right, not for the next election, but for the middle class," President Obama said in the Rose Garden. "We've got to stop blocking emergency relief for Americans who are out of work. We've got to extend unemployment insurance."


But the top Senate Republican countered that it was Democrats who were playing political games at the expense of unemployed Americans.


Democrats don't care about the people just the power.

Should Unemployment Benefits be Extended?

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Financial Oversight Reform President Obama what is in it?

Congress Passes Financial Oversight Reform - NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — The sweeping expansion of federal financial regulation approved by Congress on Thursday and now headed to President Obama’s desk reflects a renewed mistrust of financial markets after decades in which Washington stood back from Wall Street with wide-eyed admiration.

The bill, heavily promoted by Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats as a response to the 2008 financial crisis, cleared the Senate by a vote of 60 to 39, largely along party lines, after weeks of wrangling that allowed Democrats to pick up the three Republican votes to ensure passage.

The vote was the culmination of nearly two years of fierce lobbying and intense debate over the appropriate response to the financial excesses that dragged the nation into the worst recession since the Great Depression.

The result is a catalog of repairs and additions to the rusted infrastructure of a regulatory system that has failed to keep pace with the expanding scope and complexity of modern finance.

Place to keep your money

The legislation will be carried out mostly by the same federal workers who were on duty as the financial system collapsed. The new consumer bureau, for example, mostly will be staffed with employees transferred from the consumer divisions of the existing banking regulators.

Administration officials said they were confident that placing those employees under new leadership, and granting them new powers, would produce better results.

It creates a council of federal regulators, led by the Treasury secretary, to coordinate the detection of
risks to the financial system, and it provides new powers to constrain and even dismantle troubled companies.

Democrats divided initially over how to pursue that goal. Some pushed to break apart large banks and curtail risky kinds of trading. Others sought a grander overhaul of federal regulation. The administration’s approach, which prevailed, instead is focused on giving existing regulators additional powers in the hope that they will produce better results.

The legislation is painted in broad strokes, so like actors handed a script, those regulators have broad leeway to shape its meaning and its impact.

This reform will foster that innovation, not hamper it,” Mr. Obama said Thursday.

In the hope that they will produce better results. Sounds like a great law?

FinReg: More Harm Than Good?

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Oil rig leaves the Gulf of Mexico as President Obama claims he is Business Friendly.

First rig sails away over deep-water drilling ban | Business | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

WASHINGTON — Diamond Offshore announced Friday that its Ocean Endeavor drilling rig will leave the Gulf of Mexico and move to Egyptian waters immediately — making it the first to abandon the United States in the wake of the BP oil spill and a ban on deep-water drilling.

And the Ocean Endeavor's exodus probably won't be the last, according to oil industry officials and Gulf Coast leaders who warn that other companies eager to find work for the now-idled rigs are considering moving them outside the U.S.

Devon Energy Corp. had been leasing the Endeavor to drill in the same region of the Gulf as BP's leaking Macondo well, which has been gushing crude since a lethal blowout April 20.

But Diamond announced Friday it will lease the rig through June 30, 2011, to Cairo-based Burullus Gas Co., which plans to send the Endeavor to Egyptian waters immediately.

Deep Water Rig

Gibbs defended the moratorium, promising an immediate appeal to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Gibbs said President Barack Obama believes that until investigations can determine why the spill happened, continued deepwater drilling potentially exposes workers and the environment to "a danger that the  president does not believe we can afford."

Obama imposed the moratorium on offshore drilling after the BP oil spill along the Gulf Coast, saying the government rashly concluded that because one rig failed, the others are in immediate danger, too. The Interior Department had halted approval of any new permits for  deepwater drilling and suspended drilling of 33 exploratory wells in the Gulf.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said President Barack Obama believes strongly that drilling at such depths does not make sense and puts the safety of workers "at a danger that the president does not believe we can afford."

President Barack Obama said he and his administration have pursued a “fundamentally business-friendly” agenda and are “fierce advocates” for the free market, rejecting corporate criticism of his policies. “The irony is, is that on the left we are perceived as being in the pockets of big business; and then on the business side, we are perceived as being anti-business,” Obama said in a
Feb. 9 interview in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands tomorrow. “You would be hard-pressed to identify a piece of legislation that we have proposed out there that, net, is not good for businesses,” he added. He predicted that legislation he will sign this year would cut corporate taxes by about $70 billion.
“Whether we can get it through Congress is always a question because, as we have seen throughout this year, we have a political process in Washington right now that is a little dysfunctional,” Obama said.

This is one thing I agree with President Obama, "The White House is a little dysfunctional right now".

Obama's Gulf Oil Spill

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Morris; President Obama's next big Economic Crisis.

The next big economic crisis - TheHill.com

Many say that the situation in Greece is a harbinger of what is coming to the United States. They are right. But first it will come to states like New York, California and Michigan that are stretched way beyond their means and deeply in debt.
Until now, the problems in these states have been papered over by federal aid. Essentially, Washington has relieved these states (and the local governments they fund) of their constitutional obligations to balance their budgets by giving them welfare checks in the nick of time. Obama now seeks to pass $50 billion in additional welfare to the states.
But since these federal funds are not necessarily recurring — and the jobs and obligations they fund are — they simply enlarge each year’s deficit hole and enable the states to go more deeply into the red.

Dick Morris, Says what he means, means why he says.

NY state debt in red zone, should cut $20 billion: study

(Reuters) - The $120 billion that New York state owes in debt, health and pension benefits for public workers puts it in the danger zone, and getting down to the safety zone requires a $20 billion cut, a study said Tuesday

New York's ability to pay its bills was estimated at a ratio of 1.099, meaning that for every dollar of resources it has,
there are $1.099 worth of obligations.

New York's public authorities have over $80 billion in debt that is not backed by state revenues, according to the
state comptroller's most recent analysis, posted on his web site: here

State Debt Woes Grow Too Big to Camouflage

California, New York and other states are showing many of the same signs of debt overload that recently took Greece to the brink — budgets that  will not balance, accounting that masks debt, the use of derivatives to plug holes, and armies of retired public workers who are counting on benefits that are proving harder and harder to pay.

And states are responding in sometimes desperate ways, raising concerns that they, too, could face a debt crisis.

Some economists fear the states have a potentially bigger problem than their recession-induced budget woes. If investors become reluctant to buy the states’ debt, the result could be a credit squeeze, not entirely different from the financial strains in Europe, where markets were reluctant to refinance billions in Greek debt.

The state’s economy will also be weighed down by the ballooning federal debt, though California does not have to worry about those payments as much as its taxpaying citizens and businesses do.
You can see this effects all of us. It is time to get off your lazy boy chairs and join the Tea Party or another group and let your voice be heard.

Tackling Californias Mounting Debt

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