By Bernie Becker
The House passed a $106 billion spending bill on Tuesday that will help finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,overcoming almost universal opposition from Republicans.
The measure passed 226-202,
with only five Republicans voting for it. (One of those five was Representative John McHugh, President Obama’s choice to be Secretary of the Army.)
House Republicans had been very supportive of the spending
bill, but balked at a provision in the latest version that would give billions to the International Monetary Fund. The version passed by the House today also shelved a ban on releasing photos documenting abuse of foreign prisoners
by American soldiers, a move also decried by Republicans.
With Tuesday’s vote, the spending bill now moves to the Senate, which could act on it this week.
The House had originally passed the measure last month by an overwhelming vote of 368-60. But that bill did not include the provision, initially inserted by the Senate and sharply criticized by House Republicans, that extends an additional $5 billion so the I.M.F. can secure $108 billion to give out in loans.
Several leading House Republicans – including the minority leader, John Boehner, and the whip, Eric Cantor – called the I.M.F. provision a “global bailout.”
Mr. Obama has urged Congress to approve the funds. After congressional negotiators reached a deal last week to drop the photo ban, he also promised that his administration would help keep the photos sealed.
For their part, Democratic supporters in Congress argued that around 80 percent of the money in the measure will go toward the two wars. The House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, also took to the floor to point out that Republicans like Ronald Reagan had supported funding the I.M.F.
The bill allocates about $80 billion to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through Sept. 30, which is the end of the fiscal year. The measure also includes almost $8 billion to fight the flu pandemic and more than $10 billion in foreign aid.
Republicans had been broadcasting their opposition to the bill, causing some tense moments for a House Democratic leadership that also had to deal with progressive Democrats who oppose allocating additional money for the wars.
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, urged rank-and-file Democrats to get behind the war spending bill, despite those misgivings.
The President of the United States is asking me to ask you to vote for this supplemental, Mrs. Pelosi, Democrat of California, told lawmakers in a closed caucus meeting, according to officials who attended. Mrs. Pelosi added that Democrats simply could not allow the spending measure to fail.
In the end, just over 30 Democrats ended up voting against the package, down from 51 last month.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/house-approves-war-spending-bill/
As we pay our tax bills, it seems an appropriate time to urge everyone to Rethink Afghanistan, a war that currently costs over $2 billion a month but hasn't made us any safer. Everyone has a friend or relative who just lost a job. Do we really want to spend over $1 trillion on another war? Everyone knows someone who has lost their home. Do we really want spend our tax dollars on a war that could last a decade or more?
The Obama administration has taken some smart steps to counter this economic crisis with its budget request. Do we really want to see that effort wasted by expanding military demands?
Watch Pulitzer Prize-winning authors and journalists, military and foreign policy experts, leading economists, and many more explain just how much the war in Afghanistan will cost us over how many years.
We must urge Congress to raise key questions about this war at once. As FireDogLake blogger Siun recently wrote, "Once again we are planning a surge with no exit plan and a continued lack of concern for the most basic protection of the civilians in the land we claim to liberate." http://rethinkafghanistan.com
Barack Obama: The Naked Emperor
http://www.wearechange.org/
Dream Deferred: Americans May Never Retire
The retirement plans of many Americans went out the window in the past year due to the economic downturn, a new survey finds. A lot of folks now are looking at Plan B, and Plan B means working more and working later in life.
It's not unlike what our great-great grandparents planned for, back before the concept of retirement came into vogue.
However, working beyond age 65 doesn't have to be dismal, experts say, especially if you change your expectations and push yourself to pursue work in a field that you love.
Just keep working First, here are the survey results:
No surprise, but about three-quarters of adults in the so-called threshold generation (ages 50-64) have seen the value of their investments — mutual funds, individual stocks or retirement accounts such as 401(k)s — decline in the past year, according to the national survey of 2,417 Americans conducted Feb. 23 to March 23 by the Pew Research Center's Social Demographic Trends Project.
Full Article Here
The changing face of poverty http://money.cnn.com/news/specials/poverty/
Millions of Americans live in poverty, more families are suffering and hunger is seen growing.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Poverty and hunger are problems that many Americans relegate to the Third World. But the steady growth of poverty has left millions of American families afraid they won't have enough money to put food on the table.
According to the most recent Census Bureau statistics, nearly 36 million Americans lived in poverty in 2003, an increase of 1.3 million from 2002. And since 2000, 4.4 million more people in this country are living in poverty. The Census Bureau defines poverty as an individual earning $9,393 or less and $14,680 or less for a family of three.
And American families are faring worse than they have in years. Last year 7.6 million American families -- or 10 percent of all families -- lived in poverty, a big jump from 2000.
Jared Bernstein, a labor economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, said the growth in the number of poor should give us pause, but even more troubling is the growing disparity in America
between who is rich and who is poor.
In the last few decades, pay for wealthier Americans has risen dramatically -- fueled by growth in salaries, bonuses, stock options and other compensation, Bernstein said. But wages for millions of lower-wage workers have dwindled. Many have lost their jobs altogether.
This "wedge" has prevented the benefits of economic growth from being spread equally. In addition, the current economic recovery is the weakest since World War II in terms of job growth.
Traditionally, the United States has used economic growth and job creation to reduce poverty, but in today's world that's only meaningful to the extent that wage inequality is reduced, Bernstein said.
"The U.S. economy has experienced three years of recovery, yet poverty has continued to go up," he said.
In fact, the latest numbers show that nearly 6 percent of all working Americans lived in poverty last year -- a level that's remained stubbornly high.
Also surprising: the rise in the number of married couples in poverty, since they are traditionally the most resilient demographic. In 2003, 3.1 million married couples lived in poverty, with 53 percent of poor families headed by a married couple, a dramatic increase from 2001 when 2.8 million married couples were poor.
William Dickens, an economist with the Brookings Institution, agrees that the gap between rich and poor is widening, but he says, "in the last 30 years, it has taken robust economic growth for wage gains at the bottom of the income bracket. In general, this has not been a roaring recovery."
But Dickens says even in this period of weak economic recovery, workers can get by, if they are educated and flexible enough. More education translates to better pay, according to Dickens.
But as skilled American workers compete with a growing number of well educated and cheaper overseas workers, the wage gap in the U.S. will most likely continue to grow, says Kent Hughes, an economist with the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC. Hughes believes that the already limber American worker is going to have to become even more flexible as jobs traditionally reserved for white-collar American workers, such as computer programming, are being done more cheaply abroad.
http://www.thepeoplespeak.com/
http://howardzinn.org/
Hunger
Fear and hunger walk hand in hand with poverty, and last year 12.6 million American households -- 11.2 percent of all American homes -- were afraid they might not be able to put enough food on the table, according to the Census Bureau. That's up more than 1.6 million households from the year 2000.
How are these families coping? They eat less varied meals, visit shelters and get food assistance from food banks and emergency kitchens. Of these families, 3.9 million said that one or more members of the family actually went hungry last year -- an 18.2 percent increase from 2000.
A recent report by the outplacement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas found that many food banks are in "crisis mode." In Ohio, for example, the Ohio Food Bank has seen the number of people requiring assistance jump 17 to 20 percent this year, "with a significant increase in the number of working poor."
Millions of working Americans are struggling to find adequate food, health care and housing for their families. Unable to earn a living wage, many have resorted to food banks and community centers for help. But according to the Challenger report, many of those institutions say that making the increased demand even worse is the fact that "donations and government funding are at all-time lows."
http://www.federaljack.com/red-pill-films/on-demand/
http://www.davidicke.com/economic catastrophe
http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/
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