WASHINGTON (Reuters) – One of the greatest challenges U.S. states face in spending federal stimulus money is funding the burst in bureaucracy that accompanies the funds, a government watchdog said on Thursday, as the Obama administration pledged to give states more help.
Revenue has been dropping in most U.S. states for a year, and many governments have cut staff. But the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act flooded states with money for programs and required them to keep the public and federal government apprised of their spending, all of which requires more workers, said the Government Accountability Office.
“Due to fiscal constraints, many states reported significant declines in the number of oversight staff — limiting their ability to ensure proper implementation and management of Recovery Act funds,” the GAO’s nearly 300-page report on the stimulus plan said.
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WASHINGTON – The billions in transportation stimulus dollars that President Barack Obama promoted as a way to create jobs shortchange counties that need the work the most, an Associated Press analysis has found.
The AP’s review of more than 5,500 planned transportation projects nationwide is the most complete picture available of where states plan to spend the first wave of highway money. It reveals that states are planning to spend 50 percent more per person in areas with the lowest unemployment than in communities with the highest. The Transportation Department said it will attempt to replicate the AP’s analysis as it continues pressing states to dole out money fairly.
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Results of the stimulus plan, direct political payback to unions that supported the Obama campaign, creating jobs where there is low unemployment and states can’t spend the money due to lack of resources.
As usual, the government is trying to help and puts resources in the wrong spots and the controls decisions which have nothing to do with the original area of concern.
Yup, just the new business as usual from the hopeychange administration.
I thought after the 1st 50 days that things could only get better, lots of new people making new people mistakes, these people really have pride in America just not reacting to well to the new power and environment.
It has just gotten worse except for the distraction game, the Obama administration has gotten very, very good at distraction while the real agenda of the government take over of a majority of American business marches forward.
Some of the highlights/lowlights
1) The American Apology tour through Europe. I thought only look at how important I am, self-indulgent Hollywood types (Penn, Glover, Bellafonte) and ex-presidents (Carter) went around the world saying America is evil. Now the sitting president is apologizing to the world because American Capitalism over the last century and a half has brought an improved standard of living to a large segment of the world population.
2) Cut 100 million dollars from federal budget, same as a family making $45000 a year taking a $1.22 annual pay cut. I wonder what will be cut in the family budget to make up for the income loss, need to drink water instead of the bottle of soda at today’s lunch. savings achieved, no more cutting needed.
3) Media lapdog to the president – ignores hundreds of thousands of protesters who think that government is overstepping its bounds and government intervention into private society needs to be curtailed.
4) Continue to ignore friends and prop up enemies. (Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea) And listen to them speak while they rant about how evil America is.
5) Politicize the security of America by releasing CIA memos
All of these are a distraction as they push through a universal health insurance and energy cap and trade plan.
Universal health care will result in limiting access, it is the only way to decrease costs is to limit access. See Charles Krauthammer collumn. The government has convinced a majority of the people that the America Health Care industry is broken and can only be “fixed” by the federal government.
The federal government is going to do the same thing with the energy industry under Cap & Trade. Cap & Trade will result in significant 300 to 400% increases in energy prices which will raise the prices for each American household about $3900 dollars more a year. This will result in American’s becoming enraged against energy companies and utilities giving the government the support to price cap and nationalize the energy industry. This will result in less energy for everyone to use.
It is called hidden taxes on business which gives those in power the ability to create a crisis and then solve the crisis by taking more power.
America is on a road to rapid failure and lower standards of living for the good of everyone.
POWER CORRUPTS, ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPT ABSOLUTELY!!!!!!!!!!
Strong banks will be allowed to repay bail-out funds they received from the US government but only if such a move passes a test to determine whether it is in the national economic interest, a senior administration official has told the Financial Times.
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The official said former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was right to treat all the banks the same way in late 2008 at the peak of the crisis but it was now necessary to differentiate more between institutions.
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I hope the banks will learn from this, never trust government, they took the government’s money when some did not want it, now that they want to give it back since they never really did much with it to begin with, the government will not take it back until certain tests are passed.
All Businesses, if you want to be independent, do not take government “loans”. The strings will never be gone and if they want the government will take over your business from you. ( New GM CEO ring a bell.)
Now since the public has gotten more vocal about stopping the insane spending, Congress wants to back out. The government solution is not to let the banks figure it out for themselves. The government will just buy the banks by taking over the bank’s stocks and destroy an individuals common stock value.
President Obama’s top economic advisers have determined that they can shore up the nation’s banking system without having to ask Congress for more money any time soon, according to administration officials.
In a significant shift, White House and Treasury Department officials now say they can stretch what is left of the $700 billion financial bailout fund further than they had expected a few months ago, simply by converting the government’s existing loans to the nation’s 19 biggest banks into common stock.
Remember, the government will change the rules whenever it wants to keep control.
Stopping this type of government behavior is the real root of the tea parties last weak. The government needs to get out of the way and stop trying to prevent some failures and preventing all from succeeding.
Take money from the government and you will have no idea what strings will be attached after the fact.
The jealous, take from successful, success is evil attitude of this country is against the principals on which this country was built and the people exposing these beliefs should be ashamed of themselves.
But now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the “Pay for Performance Act of 2009,” would impose government controls on the pay of all employees — not just top executives — of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.
Not only will the federal government order companies what products to make and sell they are setting the salaries of the employees.
History is repeating itself, I fear we are in 1930 with progressive government activists in charge, today the all think the reason the depression was so bad is that government did not do enough soon enough. Since history is taught so poorly in the US now, everything I have read outside of school history books is that the government action made the economy worse than it would have been.
The number one reason for this is that the government started retro-actively throwing out valid private contracts without due process in a court of law. The resulted in people not believing in the validity of contracts since they were valid until one party of the contract complained to the government who then voided or made obsolete the contract.
Without valid private contracts, there can be no business, therefore a depression.
After experiencing a few emerging-market crises, I get the sense of watching the same movie over and over. All too often, a tragic part of that movie is the failure of the countries’ policymakers to hear the loud cries of canaries in the coal mine. Before running up further outsized budget deficits, should we not heed the markets that now see a 10 percent probability that the U.S. government will default on its sovereign debt in the next five years? And should we not be paying close attention to the Chinese central bank governor’s musings that he does not feel comfortable with the $1 trillion of U.S. government debt that the Chinese central bank already owns, let alone adding to those holdings?
America needs to live within its means and get back to a mining,manufacturing base. A service economy of people shuffling paper is destined to collapse on its own weight since there is not rock solid foundation.
Yes, if you are reading this, you heard that right. The current national debt is ~ $10 Trillion. It took 220+ years to accumulate this debt. Under the very rosy economic growth in the Obama forward looking budget the debt in 2019 will be $23 trillion dollars.
The White House on Sunday began harnessing every part of the Democratic Party’s machinery to defend President Obama’s budget and portray Republicans as reflexively political, according to party strategists.
At a time when Capitol Hill has begun to resist the sweep and cost of his agenda, Obama’s aides used the Sunday interview programs to launch an aggressive case that his bold budget for health care and other issues will help fuel an economic recovery
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The Obama grassroots network—now known as Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee—has launched an e-mail pledge drive on MyBarackObama.com in which supporters sign their e-mail address to the statement: “I support President Obama’s bold approach for renewing America’s economy.”
The pledge drive was announced with a video called “Ready for the Fight.” Plouffe e-mailed supporters over the weekend with a challenge labeled “The next few weeks”: “In the next few weeks we’ll be asking you to do some of the same things we asked of you during the campaign—talking directly to people in your communities about the President’s ideas for long-term prosperity.”
This is not an easy message war for Democrats. Obama’s budget calls for the largest deficit in U.S. history and a doubling of the national debt to $23 trillion in 2019.
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Read the entire article, the plan is clear, destroy anyone who actually wants to talk about the issue of fiscal responsibility by painting them as an obstructionist and politically motivated.
I am not sure about anyone else but how does one cut the annual deficit by 50% in the next 4 years while spending more money than every before an adding more to the national debt than the total accumulated in the history of the country.
Spend, spend, spend until debt free.
Change,Hope,Hope, Change, etc…
Based on this “A Detailed Look At The Foreclosure Rescue Plan” analysis of the Obama foreclosure rescue plan there is 1/3rd with which I can agree as long it is not limited to only those who have lost jobs.
Category #1: Underwater Mortgage Refinance
The Plan: Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) will refinance mortgages that fit a certain description, with the ultimate intent of making mortgage payments for the average American family more affordable.
The Good: This part shouldn’t actually cost taxpayers any money, since it merely involves rewriting the rules as they were. Those home owners eligible for refinancing – those who still have a prayer of meeting their monthly dues – will still owe the same amount they did before, just under a different policy that makes it easier for them to pay what they owe. This of course frees them up to spend money on other purchases, which helps revive the economy.
The Bad: Critics of the plan such as the Wall Street Journal warn that refinancing won’t do much good in the end, since it “assumes the inability to refinance/falling housing prices are the reason for homeowner ABC having trouble with their mortgage, as opposed to them having bought a house they couldn’t afford in the first place.”
Conclusion: For those homeowners who acted perfectly responsibly but lost their jobs due to factors outside their control, this could be a welcome boon. The problem is that changing their rates won’t change the fact that they do still need to pay them. So in the long run, it might result in absolutely no change. And for those people who did take on mortgages such as ARMs that were way out of their ability to pay in the first place, at best it just reinforces that they can make stupid decisions without facing the consequences, and at worst it leaves them with absolutely no change… since they’re still going to have to pay those bills somehow or another.
If someone is current on their mortgage payments, wants to refinance the value of their house and they had >20% equity at the time of purchase but the current market has declined so that the new mortgage being requested is within 5% of the current value. If the new mortgage results in a payment which is less than the current payment this is a good thing for the responsible person who is paying their mortgage.
Category #2 – new rules, it depends on the rule changes if this is good or bad, so far to vague to draw any conclusions.
Category #3 – these are the loans which are a major reason for the start of this economic slowdown. I feel bad for these people but sometimes the best thing that can happen is hitting rock bottom in one’s life because it can’t get worse. Sometimes starting over is much better than trying to salvage a lost cause, knowing when to stop throwing good money after bad money is a key.
Started surfing a little at lunch time today and I think we are watching the collapse of America state by state as to much government spending runs themselves out of money and finally some are taking a stance over to much government.
As the stock market looks to the future it sees nothing but failure and losses. Since Obama was elected the Dow has gone down over 2000 points. If the market felt there was hope in the next year or two the market would be flat to rising despite the reports of what has occurred in the past.
As Obama’s reverend stated, America’s Chickens have come home to roost. We are reaping the rewards of government excesses of the last 50-70 years as the bills are coming due. People and businesses have followed the government’s example, living above one’s means for the last 20+ years.
Evolution it reality, even for humans, the heard needs to be thinned, the weak do not survive and are taken by the predators. The correction is inevitable and necessary for survival of the species. Evolution and nature are cruel. It is the reality of life.
Posted by suemdonk 
Posted by suemdonk 
Posted by suemdonk 
