Let’s see: he’s planning on giving a non-primetime speech to a joint session of Congress regarding jobs creation next week, one which has already been reduced to being an idea to release a notion of a plan over the next few months (in between campaign fundraisers). We have the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 coming up in two Sundays (he did use a previous WA to discuss coming together for 9/11). We just received a jobs report which showed no jobs created in August. Consumer confidence is dropping like a stone. Most people think we’re in recession. People are still recovering from Irene. And so many other problems. So, what does he use his Labor Day weekend address for?
President Barack Obama on Saturday called on Congress to pass a clean extension of the transportation bill, warning of economic calamity in the failure of its passage.
“This would put a stop to highway construction, bridge repair, mass transit systems and other important projects that keep our country moving quickly and safely,†Obama said in his weekly address.
The current Surface Transportation Bill, which is critical for the maintenance of the nation’s highway system, is set to expire at the end of September.
But Congressional Republicans and Democrats are strongly divided over both the cost and duration of any extension.
So, no more painting bridges, re-fixing the same potholes, and scraping rust off of railroad tracks? Didn’t we just spend hundreds of billions via the Stimulus act on this? And, if Obama wants to avoid economic calamity, well, a) too late, thanks to Democrat policies, and b) he could avoid future calamity and just resign.
The Republican response focuses on telling Obama he should sign a balanced budget amendment. Yeah, that’ll happen. It would limit Obama’s spending ability.
Fortunately, Obama is going to spend the next few days working on jobs….oh, sorry, he’s taking today off, spending the time at Camp David. On Sunday, he flies to New Jersey for some photo ops in the midst of Irene damage for an hour or so, then heads back to Camp David, and has nothing on the schedule for Monday, Labor Day.
I don’t know how the roads are doing in your area but here is a story of what is happening here. The interstate is in fairly rough condition, expecially with the hot weather. In addition, a friend of mine owns a road construciton company and I once asked why his roads where is such bad shape as little as 6 months after construction. He said that federal engineers come in and dictate what they are to do. It they tell the engineers that putting a road over a swamp the way they desire will not work, they respond with “just do it”.
But that is off point, with the bad roads, Obama has been busy improving them here. O, not the surface. They build a semicircular concrete pad connected to the shoulder, then put a fancy mile marker on the pad. In the past, they just pluged a marker in the grass and it worked fine, mowing about the two is the same. I would extimate that it cost about $200,000 to put these pads and markers down a 30 miles stretch. What a country!!
[…] Obama $787 billion stimulus package supposed to pay for shovel ready infrastructure projects? So we are going to spend even more money the US does not have to do the […]
WEll, we are getting a new crosstown expressway here. One that is about 20 years overdue. However, it was started before Obama took office.
But, I would like to add something. Balanced budget amendment would be nice… but would not do anything IMHO.
RIght now, we have a law on the books called PAY-GO, basically. It is essentially the same thing as balancing the budget. Yet, how many years has this law been ignored? How many years have even the Repubs ignored it?
Congressional spending is tyrannical at best. There is NO accountability and absolutely no fear of the people’s reprisals.
If a congress-critter commits corruption and violates the law and billions are wasted.. what happens? Sure, he gets voted out of office, but does the law get voided? Does the money get returned? Is there an impetus to fix the system?
HELL NO!!
And that is why our country will never recover.