Obama signs $1.1 trillion spending bill into law

[The Northerner]

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has signed into law a $1.1 trillion bill that increases the budgets in many areas of the government by about 10 percent, including health, law enforcement and veterans' programs.

Obama signed the bill privately at the White House on Wednesday after receiving the bill from Congress on Sunday.
The bill lumps together six of the 12 annual appropriations bills for the 2010 budget year that began Oct. 1.

Most Republicans opposed the bill, citing runaway federal spending. They also pointed to an estimated $3.9 billion for more than 5,000 local projects sought by lawmakers from both parties.

Democrats said the spending would help the economy recover from the recession.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091216/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_spending_bill

[bluevoter4life]

1. Democrats use "economic recovery"

To justify further spending, with thus far, no evidence of any real results, Republicans use "terrorism" as a justification of further spending, again, with no real results. The line between the two parties is becoming more and more blurred.

[Renew Deal]

5. I don't think the lines are blurred based on your assertions.

The Democrats are about helping people and the republicans are about scaring them. Those are pretty significant differences.

[bluevoter4life]

7. Call it dung, call it fecal matter

In the end its all the same shit. Both parties racking up the debt, disguising it under different auspices, with the end result being the same. A further spiral into the recession, with the taxpayers getting screwed yet again. The $787 billion bailout was supposed to create jobs and boost the lending practices of the banks, but we see how that worked out. I'm quickly abandoning all hope for the Democrats, as they are proving to be a bunch of spineless corporate whores who care more about re-election than they do about the American people. I voted for change last year, but now I want a full refund.

[SpartanDem]

9. 787 bailout? You mean the stimulus bill?

I think you're confusing two very different things any economist who isn't a right wing idiot will tell you the stimulus is working. Many like Paul Krugman argue we need more of it and Democrats this week just approved another 155 billion

The good news is that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a k a the Obama stimulus plan, is working just about the way textbook macroeconomics said it would. But that’s also the bad news — because the same textbook analysis says that the stimulus was far too small given the scale of our economic problems. Unless something changes drastically, we’re looking at many years of high unemployment

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/opinion/02krugman.html



The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act can’t seem to catch a break. When the economy contracted at a 0.7% rate in the quarter after it was first enacted, critics argued that the contraction was evidence that the recovery act didn’t (or even couldn’t) have any effect at all. Never mind that there was wide agreement among economists that, without it the contraction would’ve been three or four times worse.

Now that it has been reported that the economy expanded at a 3.5% rate in the third quarter of this year, some experts quoted by CNN and the New York Times (among others) are suggesting that precisely because the recovery act was responsible for the lion’s share of growth, it somehow had failed to repair the economy’s deep (usually unspecified) underlying structural problems. In short, the recovery-package-led growth in the third quarter was somehow “artificial.”


http://www.epi.org/analysis_and_opinion/entry/recovery_act_spurs_genuine_growth

[kestrel91316]

2. Let me guess: lots of money for war machinery; not so much for

universal health care?

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. i see Congress CAN pass a law if it wants to.

to spend money we do not have.
Little debate, little coverage, little controversy, little objection to it, and it got signed.

But health care for the taxpayer????
Ohhh Noooessssssssssss.

[Xenotime]

4. Fucking signed it privately?!? Pugs are going to LOVE that.

What the fuck happened to transparency?

[Renew Deal]

6. You want to see him sign a bill?

What does that have to do with the contents of the bill? Maybe this will make you feel better.

[SpartanDem]

8. Obama has signed 116 bills this year

most bills don't get freaking ceremony

[FrenchieCat]

10. You live for pugs and what they love and don't love?

Neat!