Mitch McConnell Wasteful Spending In The Stimulus Bill VIDEO

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell discusses the wasteful spending Democrats stuffed in their "economic stimulus" bill. Among the problems he points out are permanent spending increases and pet projects that are unlikely to create jobs. He also raises the question of hundreds of billions in interest payments that taxpayers will be responsible for if the bill passes in its current form. RepublicanLeader

McConnell: ‘There’s plenty of room to cut wasteful spending’ from the Office of Senator Mitch McConnell

‘Republicans have a number of better ideas for making this bill simpler, more targeted, and more directly beneficial to workers and homeowners’

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday:

“According to the news reports, President Obama called Congressional Democrats down to the White House the other night to talk about treating this bill more like a stimulus and less like a free for all. I commend him on the effort. And I appreciate it.

“But after yesterday it looks like they might need stronger medicine. The day after meeting with President Obama, Democrats offered several amendments — and every single one of them ADDED to the total cost of what is already nearly a trillion-dollar spending bill.

“Eleven billion here, 25 billion there, another $6 billion somewhere else. In other words: real money.

“By the end of the first day of debate, Democrats had added more than $41 billion to a bill that just about everybody else in America thought was already too big.

“On this side, Republicans offered some amendments too. All but one sought to reduce the cost to the taxpayer.

“The President has tried to set some priorities. Unfortunately, Democrats just keep throwing more money on top of an already-bloated bill.

“At some point, we’re going to have to learn to say no. If we’re going to help the economy, we need to get a hold of this bill. And making it bigger isn’t the answer.

“The President seems to recognize the problem. Last night, he repeated his call for discipline and restraint in a letter from OMB Director Peter Orszag. Its message was clear: The nation is in a financial crisis. And this bill should be stripped of everything that doesn’t aim to solve that crisis.

“As Mr. Orzsag put it: ‘We need to recognize that this recovery and reinvestment plan is an extraordinary response to an extraordinary crisis. It should not be seen as an opportunity to abandon the fiscal discipline that we owe each and every taxpayer in spending their money and in keeping the United States strong in a global, interdependent, economy.’

“This bill needs to be cut down. And we could start with permanent spending increases, which only increase the deficit from here on out. This is permanent spending that’s been slipped into a bill that was supposed to be timely, targeted and temporary.

“Many of these additions may be very worthwhile — but they don’t belong in a stimulus bill. So the first thing I think we need to do is make a distinction between what grows the economy and what doesn’t — and anything that doesn’t gets cut.

“That’s what the President said Monday night, and that’s what he repeated last night — that we need to be, quote, “trimming out things that aren’t relevant to putting people back to work right now.”

“Add the interest payments and the total non-stimulative spending in this bill and it’s in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And that’s just unacceptable.

“So there’s plenty of room to cut in wasteful spending. As Mr. Orszag said in his letter, the President is, quote, ‘insistent that the bill not include any earmarks or special projects….’

“Another target rich area is all the spending for new programs that claim to create new jobs.

“What people don’t realize is how much it costs to create some of these jobs. Analysts have gone through some of the new programs. Here’s what they’ve found:

· $524 million for a program at the State Department that promises to create 388 jobs here at home. That comes to $1.35 million per job.

· $125 million for the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority. That comes to $480,000 per job.

· $100 million for 300 jobs at USAID. That’s $333,333 per job.

“And that’s just a few. Surely there are more efficient ways to create jobs with taxpayer dollars than this.

“So there is plenty of room to cut in this bill. It’s time we started doing some of it. America is already staring at a $1 trillion deficit. The bill before us, in its current form, will cost, with interest, $1.3 trillion. Soon we’ll vote on an Omnibus Appropriations bill that will cost $400 billion. The President is talking about another round of bank bailout funds that some say could cost as much as four trillion dollars.

“This isn’t Monopoly money. All of it is borrowed — borrowed money that the taxpayers will have to pay back at some point. I think we owe it to them to lay all these things out on the table now so America can see what it’s getting into. And I think we also owe it the American people to show some restraint on the bill before us.

“Republicans have a number of better ideas for making this bill simpler, more targeted, and more directly beneficial to workers and homeowners. We’ve been sharing those ideas for the last week.

“Economists from both sides of the political spectrum recognize that housing is at the root of the current downturn. We believe we should fix this problem first, before we do anything else — certainly before we build a fish barrier, spruce up offices for bureaucrats or build a water slide. I mean, let’s get serious here. We can either talk about fixing the problem, or we can take immediate action to help 40 million Americans stay in their homes or buy a new one.

“We need to act now, and soon we’ll be voting on a Republican better idea to do just that.

“But first, there are plenty of areas in this bill we can cut even before we consider some of the good Republican ideas that President Obama has said he wants to incorporate into the final bill.” ###

Michael S. Steele Biography VIDEO

A self-described Lincoln Republican. Michael S. Steele earned a place in history in 2003 when he became the first African-American elected to statewide office in Maryland. His experiences as a successful elected conservative African-American Republican and his engaging speaking style have launched Steele into national prominence. His first major exposure was during an appearance at the 2004 Republican National Convention.

Since then President George W. Bush chose Steele to be part of the U.S. delegation to the investiture of Pope Benedict XVI, and as a member of the Presidential Delegation to the Leon H. Sullivan Summit VIII in Tanzania. Steele has been an entertaining and eloquent guest on cable political talk shows such as HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher and Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report.

Born in 1958 at Andrews Air Force Base in Prince George’s County, Maryland, Steele was raised in Washington, DC. He was an adopted child and spent his childhood in the Petworth neighborhood of Northwest Washington, D.C. a small racially integrated community. He and his half-sister were raised by her father, John Turner, and their mother, Maebell Turner, who was born into a southern sharecropping family in South Carolina. Steele’s half-sister Monica later married and divorced former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson.

Steele attended Archbishop Carroll Roman Catholic High School in Washington, D.C. While at Carroll, he participated in the Glee Club, the National Honor Society and many of the school’s drama productions. During his senior year, he was elected the student council president.

Steele won a scholarship to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In his first year, he was elected class president; he was also a member of the fencing team. he struggled academically while pursuing a major in biology and was nearly expelled from the university at the year's end.

After earning A's in summer classes at George Washington University, Steele was allowed to continue at Johns Hopkins and received a bachelor's degree in international relations in 1981.

He them spent three years as a seminarian in the Order of St. Augustine in preparation for the priesthood. He entered the Augustinian Friars Seminary at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. As a seminarian, he taught freshman world history and senior economics for one year at Malvern Preparatory School in Malvern, Pennsylvania, but ultimately decided on a career in law and he left the Seminary prior to taking the vows. He earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1991.

An expert on political strategy, fund-raising, PACs, and election reform, he is the current Chairman of GOPAC. He has served on the National Federal Election Reform Commission and the NAACP Blue Ribbon Commission on Election Reform.

Steele’s mother was a widowed laundress who, he stated, worked for minimum wage rather than accept public assistance. Steele grew up in a Democratic household. However, as a young man he switched to the Republican Party.

After joining the Republican Party, Steele became chairman of the Prince George's County Republican Central Committee. In 1995, the Maryland Republican Party selected him as Maryland State Republican Man of the Year. He worked on several political campaigns, was an Alternate Delegate to the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego and a Delegate to the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia that ultimately chose the George W. Bush ticket.

In December 2000, Steele was elected chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, becoming the first African American ever to be elected chairman of any state Republican Party.

In 2002, then-Congressman Robert Ehrlich selected Steele as his running mate and nominee for Lieutenant Governor in the campaign against Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who was then the Lieutenant Governor (under Governor Parris Glendening). Steele resigned his chairmanship of the Maryland Republican Party to campaign full-time. In endorsing Townsend, The Baltimore Sun praised her running mate, Charles R. Larson, for his experience and expertise, and added: "By contrast, Mr. Ehrlich's running mate, state GOP chairman Michael S. Steele, brings little to the team but the color of his skin."

In the September primary election, Ehrlich and Steele had no serious opposition. In the November 2002 general election, even though Maryland traditionally votes Democratic and had not elected a Republican Governor in almost 40 years, the Townsend campaign was tainted by problems with outgoing governor Glendening's personal life. The Ehrlich-Steele ticket won, 51% to 48%.

Steele’s most prominent efforts for the Ehrlich administration were reforming the state’s Minority Business Enterprise program and chairing Governor Ehrlich’s Commission on Quality Education in Maryland. While opposed to the death penalty, Steele endured criticism for not standing firmly against Ehrlich's support of the punishment, despite claims of racial inequities in its administration.

When Paul Sarbanes, Maryland’s longest serving United States Senator, announced in March 2005 that he would not be a candidate for re-election in 2006, top state and national Republican officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, began pressing Steele to become their party's nominee for the seat. Steele lost the general election to Cardin on November 7, 2006, getting 44% of the vote to Cardin's 55%.

On November 11, 2008, Jeff Burton launched a political draft website to encourage Steele to run for Republican National Committee Chairman. The website allowed visitors to sign a draft petition, and received over 6,000 signatures. On November 24, 2008 Steele launched a campaign website, and confirmed his intention to run on Hannity and Colmes. Six men ran for the 2009 RNC Chairmanship: Steele, Blackwell, Mike Duncan, Saul Anuzis, Katon Dawson and Chip Saltsman. Saltsman dropped out one day before the voting. After the sixth vote, he won the chairmanship of the RNC over Dawson by a vote of 91 to 77

He is currently a Partner in the international law firm of Dewey & LeBoeuf in Washington, DC. From 1991–1997, Steele was a corporate securities attorney at the international law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in Washington, DC, specializing in sophisticated financial transactions on behalf of Wall Street underwriters. He also was a corporate finance counsel for the Mills Corporation and founded his own company, The Steele Group, a business and legal consulting firm. His writings on law, business and politics have appeared in The Washington Times, Politico.com, Townhall.com, and The Journal of International Security Affairs, among others.

Named a 2005 Aspen Institute–Rodel Fellow in Public Leadership and awarded the 2005 Bethune-DuBois Institute Award for his ongoing work in the development of quality education in Maryland, Steele also has served on a variety of boards and commissions including Export–Import Bank Advisory Board, the U.S. Naval Academy Board of Visitors, and the Republican National Committee.

Lt. Governor Steele serves on the Administrative Board of the Maryland Catholic Conference and is a member of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Landover Hills, MD, where he attends mass regularly with his wife Andrea and their two sons Michael and Drew.

Sources:

• Personal History and Life Story
• Michael S. Steele From Wikipedia