Congress has lost its mind...

[TheMercenary]

Vacation Fun on the public dime.

EDINBURGH -- The expenses racked up by U.S. lawmakers traveling here for a conference last month included one for the "control room."

Besides rooms for sleeping, the 12 members of the House of Representatives rented their hotel's fireplace-equipped presidential suite and two adjacent rooms. The hotel cleared out the beds and in their place set up a bar, a snack room and office space. The three extra rooms -- stocked with liquor, Coors beer, chips and salsa, sandwiches, Mrs. Fields cookies and York Peppermint Patties -- cost a total of about $1,500 a night. They were rented for five nights.

While in Scotland, the House members toured historic buildings. Some shopped for Scotch whisky and visited the hotel spa. They capped the trip with a dinner at one of the region's finest restaurants, paid for by the legislators, who got $118 daily stipends for meals and incidentals.

Eleven of the 12 legislators then left the five-day conference two days early.

The tour provides a glimpse of the mixture of business and pleasure involved in legislators' overseas trips, which are growing in number and mostly financed by the taxpayer. Lawmakers travel with military liaisons who carry luggage, help them through customs, escort them on sightseeing trips and stock their hotel rooms with food and liquor. Typically, spouses come along, flying free on jets operated by the Air Force. Legislative aides come too. On the ground, all travel in chauffeured vehicles.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1260...nDepthCarousel

[Griff]

Besides rooms for sleeping, the 12 members of the House of Representatives rented their hotel's fireplace-equipped presidential suite and two adjacent rooms. The hotel cleared out the beds and in their place set up a bar, a snack room and office space. The three extra rooms -- stocked with liquor, Coors beer, chips and salsa, sandwiches, Mrs. Fields cookies and York Peppermint Patties -- cost a total of about $1,500 a night. They were rented for five nights.

Our political masters have no class. We need to elect better scumbags.

[TheMercenary]

The cost they reported for such travel abroad was $13 million in 2008, a 70% jump from 2005, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records. Lawmakers don't have to report the cost of domestic travel when the government pays. The $13 million didn't include the expense of flying on Air Force planes, which lawmakers don't have to disclose.

Over the 2005-08 period, the cost of legislators' privately funded travel, both domestic and overseas, fell 70%, to $2.9 million, according to LegiStorm.com, a Web site that tracks it.

Lawmakers must reveal only general information about the travel, such as countries visited. Several weeks after a trip, they report the overall cost, without a detailed breakdown. This account of congressional travel is based on trip itineraries provided by lawmakers, meeting schedules and what two Journal reporters saw. Mr. Tanner's office and other lawmakers confirmed many details of the account and didn't dispute the others.

The blending of business and pleasure on the trip to Scotland was typical, aides and lawmakers say. In August, two Republican senators, Richard Shelby of Alabama and John Cornyn of Texas, went to Europe with their wives and aides to meet with banking regulators and industry executives. Military officials picked up Mr. Shelby's luggage at his office. A separate government car drove him and his wife to the airport. "That is typically how the military handles departures on congressional delegations," said a spokesman for the senator.

The taxpayer should not be paying for their wives.

[classicman]

My parents traveled all over the world on business. The company paid for him and my father paid for her. I see nothing in that part thats unusual.

Over the 2005-08 period, the cost fell 70%,

Well we didn't have much diplomacy then either. Now that we travel all over the world to kiss ass and make deals there is a lil travel expense.
<shrug>

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Which plan was that?

Exactly.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

The taxpayer should not be paying for their wives.

Yes, but if we didn't, the lobbyists would gain influence by buying them hookers.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by richlevy

Exactly.

The Republickins are no better if they can't produce a plan, but they have pretty much been locked out of the process.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

The Republickins are no better if they can't produce a plan, but they have pretty much been locked themselves out of the process.

Fixed it for ya.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by richlevy

Fixed it for ya.

No you didn't. They have been pretty much shut out of the process. That is what happens when you win the majority. You control the process. Another reason why our system is screwed up. Republickins did the same thing when they had the majority to the Demoncrats. Both parties suck. And the Dems have done nothing but reinforce the notion that they are not one bit different than the Repbs, they just whore a little differently and serve a different group of business interests.

[TheMercenary]

Data Shows that the Stimulus Package Was a Waste of Money
December 19, 2009

To put it kindly, the stimulus package that President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rushed through Congress at the beginning of his presidency has been a flop. It is not just that the $789 billion package has not had the effect the White House promised it would; it's that it may actually have been counterproductive, actually lengthening the recession by effectively taking money out of the private economy, where it could have been used to create jobs and for investment purposes. Instead it has been parceled out by the government, which has been unable to track where it has gone or what impact it has really had on job creation. And that has led to any number of fallacious statements by senior administration officials about jobs "created or saved."

There is really no way to assess the number of jobs "saved," which has been the principle rallying cry of the White House over the last few months. Moreover, as data released Friday by the Republicans on the House Committee on Ways and Means makes clear, payroll employment has declined in every state except North Dakota and in the District of Columbia in the nine months since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been law. Likewise the national unemployment rate, which Obama promised would not exceed 8 percent if the stimulus became law, has reached a 25-year high of over 10 percent.

As the table below indicates, in no state has anything like the promised job creation occurred. In Alabama, for example, the White House estimated that the stimulus package would generate 52,000 jobs by the end of calendar 2010. Yet the government's own figures show the state has lost a net 30,700 jobs through the end of November 2009. In Illinois, which sent Barack Obama to Washington back in November 2004, the White House estimated a net increase of 148,000 jobs but the state has lost more than 150,000 thus far.

In California, the home state of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the prediction was that 396,000 new jobs would be created by the end of next year. So far it has lost just over 340,000. In Nevada, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is in the fight of his political life as far as his 2010 re-election bid is concerned, the estimates predicted 34,000 new jobs would be created. So far this year, since the stimulus has been enacted, it has lost more than 50,000.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/peter-ro...-of-money.html

[classicman]

Why didn't you post the damn chart & let people look at it for themselves?


Initially I don't like what I'm seeing. But that chart doesn't say whether there were jobs created or not - just the net gain/loss overall. Heck it could have created 50,000 jobs at company X, but if they shut down a plan and let go of 75,000 other jobs . . . net is -25,000.

[TheMercenary]

Because I thought it would be a bit over the top so I posted the link and people can look at it that way.

[classicman]

Oh an I forgot its only December '09 not '10 so they still have a whole year. . . & stimulus III thats being floated.

[TheMercenary]

Worry sets in among those up for re-election.

Finley: Democrats worried about a backlash

and this says it all.

Pelosi said she wouldn't change course on health care just because Americans are turning against the plan.

http://detnews.com/article/20091220/...out-a-backlash

[xoxoxoBruce]

They should be worried, most people are unhappy with it as it stands.
The whole idea had pluses and minuses, when taken as a whole worked out to a plus for Americans. But by the time the far right fear mongers, the fat cat lobbyists, and Religious Fundamentalists finished their mangling, they've removed enough pluses, to make the package look like a bad idea.

We can only hope with this bill as a base, it can be tweaked in the future, to be a good thing for America. But with a congress bought and paid for by special interests, and a body of voters without interest, I doubt it.