Bush administration ignored clear warnings

[BridgeTroll]

   For such a stupid guy his is an evil genius...

[RiversideGator]

Liberals:  Please get your stories straight.  Was Bush a moronic puppet of Dick Cheney and Karl Rove or was he an evil genius leading a cabal who bilked to country out of trillions of dollars which have now been stashed in bank accounts in Dubai? 

[BridgeTroll]

Dont forget he hid is real agenda to the dems in congress and rendered them powerless with his cloaking device... and and and...breathless... pant pant... and and.....

[Midway ®]

um...did I say "bush" or did I say "bush administration"?

Reading comprehension, please.

[Charleston native]

I think these libs like to constantly say the word "administration". It gives them an intellectual superiority to know a word that is more than 3 syllables, but it is the only word that they use frequently.

[RiversideGator]

um...did I say "bush" or did I say "bush administration"?

Reading comprehension, please.

So it will be answer 1 (the puppet) then.  Thanks for the clarification.   

[tufsu1]

correct...Bush is not that bad of a guy...he just had no clue what Cheney et. al. were doing!

[Midway ®]

Yeah, and he has great reflexes and sharp eyesight.

[BridgeTroll]

Merry Christmas...

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/with-economy-in-shambles-congress-gets-a-raise-2008-12-17.html

With economy in shambles, Congress gets a raise 
By Jordy Yager 
Posted: 12/17/08 05:41 PM [ET] 

A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.

Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.


“As lawmakers make a big show of forcing auto executives to accept just $1 a year in salary, they are quietly raiding the vault for their own personal gain,” said Daniel O’Connell, chairman of The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a non-partisan group. “This money would be much better spent helping the millions of seniors who are living below the poverty line and struggling to keep their heat on this winter.”

However, at 2.8 percent, the automatic raise that lawmakers receive is only half as large as the 2009 cost of living adjustment of Social Security recipients.

Still, Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Congress should have taken the rare step of freezing its pay, as lawmakers did in 2000.

“Look at the way the economy is and how most people aren’t counting on a holiday bonus or a pay raise â€" they’re just happy to have gainful employment,” said Ellis. “But you have the lawmakers who are set up and ready to get their next installment of a pay raise and go happily along their way.”

Member raises are often characterized as examples of wasteful spending, especially when many constituents and businesses in members’ districts are in financial despair.

Rep. Harry Mitchell, a first-term Democrat from Arizona, sponsored legislation earlier this year that would have prevented the automatic pay adjustments from kicking in for members next year. But the bill, which attracted 34 cosponsors, failed to make it out of committee.

“They don’t even go through the front door. They have it set up so that it’s wired so that you actually have to undo the pay raise rather than vote for a pay raise,” Ellis said.

Freezing congressional salaries is hardly a new idea on Capitol Hill.

Lawmakers have floated similar proposals in every year dating back to 1995, and long before that. Though the concept of forgoing a raise has attracted some support from more senior members, it is most popular with freshman lawmakers, who are often most vulnerable.

In 2006, after the Republican-led Senate rejected an increase to the minimum wage, Democrats, who had just come to power in the House with a slew of freshmen, vowed to block their own pay raise until the wage increase was passed. The minimum wage was eventually increased and lawmakers received their automatic pay hike.

In the beginning days of 1789, Congress was paid only $6 a day, which would be about $75 daily by modern standards. But by 1965 members were receiving $30,000 a year, which is the modern equivalent of about $195,000.

Currently the average lawmaker makes $169,300 a year, with leadership making slightly more. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) makes $217,400, while the minority and majority leaders in the House and Senate make $188,100.

Ellis said that while freezing the pay increase would be a step in the right direction, it would be better to have it set up so that members would have to take action, and vote, for a pay raise and deal with the consequences, rather than get one automatically.

“It is probably never going to be politically popular to raise Congress’s salary,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to find taxpayers saying, ‘Yeah I think I should pay my congressman more’.”

[Midway ®]

History lesson:

Posted 9/4/2003
Lawmakers include themselves in federal pay raise
WASHINGTON (AP) â€" The House on Thursday approved a 2.2% pay raise for Congress â€" slightly less than average wage increases in private business but enough to boost lawmakers' annual salaries to about $158,000 next year.

The House members decided to allow themselves a fifth straight cost-of-living raise after rejecting them for several years during the 1990s. Their annual pay has risen from $136,700 in 1999 to about $158,000 in 2004, if the legislation clears Congress and is signed by the president. Their salary this year is $154,700.

As in past years, the congressional COLA was automatically included as part of pay increases that all federal civilian and military employees will receive. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, wages among all nongovernment workers rose an average 2.7% from July 2002 through June 2003.

Both the House and Senate, ignoring a White House recommendation that civilian pay raises be held down next year, have decided on 4.1% raises for almost all federal workers.

The pay increases are part of an $89.3 billion spending bill for the 2004 budget year for Transportation and Treasury Department programs. A vote on the spending bill was expected late Thursday. The spending bill has yet to reach the Senate floor.

Only one House member â€" Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah â€" voiced objections to the congressional increase during the debate.

"We are fighting terrorism on numerous fronts and our economy is in serious trouble, unemployment is at record high levels and our future budget deficits are predicted to be the highest in the history of this great nation," Matheson said. "Now is not the time for members of Congress to be voting themselves a pay raise."

By a 240-173 vote, the House rejected Matheson's procedural attempt to get a direct vote on the pay raise for lawmakers. In 1989, Congress voted to make cost-of-living pay increases for themselves automatic unless they voted otherwise.

Without counting outside sources of income, the earnings of members of Congress rank within the top 5% of the nation.

Joan Claybrook, president of the consumer group Public Citizen, said lawmakers, as high-income earners, were already benefiting substantially from the administration-backed tax cuts that have been enacted. She said that while she didn't necessarily oppose cost-of-living increases for members of Congress, "I do think that to give tax breaks to the rich while giving themselves a pay raise is unfair."

The 2.2% increase â€" calculated through a formula â€" would also apply to the vice president, congressional leaders and Supreme Court justices. This year, Vice President Cheney, top leaders in the House and Senate and the chief justice receive $198,600. Associate justices of the Supreme Court get $190,100 and the House majority and minority leaders receive $171,900.

President Bush's $400,000 salary is unaffected by the legislation.

Lawmakers' salaries were frozen at $133,600 from 1993 to 1997, stood at $136,700 the next two years and have risen annually since then.

The 4.1% raise for military personnel and more than 1 million civilian workers more than doubles the 2% recommended by President Bush, who cited the costs of the war on terrorism last month in seeking a lower rate. Members of Congress, who have the final say unless Bush vetoes the legislation, have long argued that there should be parity between military and civilian pay raises.

The White House, in a statement, said the proposed 4.1% increase exceeds the president's request by $2.1 billion, exceeds the inflation rate "and even exceeds the average increase in private-sector pay."

It also said the administration was "extremely disappointed" that the bill does not fund Bush's request for a $500 million fund to target pay raises to employees demonstrating high performance.

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, whose Maryland district includes many federal workers, opposed the president's proposal, saying that "his decision to invoke a national emergency to provide an inadequate pay raise for the very men and women who are confronting that emergency on a daily basis smacks of indifference."

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who has contested congressional pay raises in the past, intends to oppose it again when it reaches the Senate floor, his office said.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-04-congress-pay-raise_x.htm

[tufsu1]

Looks like Congress didn't have much say on the rising budgets and deficits over the last 7 years...

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/dec/26/na-study-faults-war-spending/news-metro/

The CSBA agreed and blamed the ballooning budgets on the Bush administration's unprecedented decision to fund the wars through giant emergency spending measures rather than through appropriations requests.

[Midway ®]

[RiversideGator]

News flash:  Your hero is about to be inaugurated.

[BridgeTroll]

Imagine that... Bumper stickers!!  I KNEW it!

[RiversideGator]

Indeed.  A bumper sticker mentality.