Well, he also ran on raising taxes for those above $250k and he backed off that the very day after he won the election, which coincidently was the correct decision. I have no qualms with his tax plan other than I would have given a little more to the mid-brackets.

That sounds like a joke. So he gets alot of the lower / middle bracket people to vote him in because of ideas like that and then he backs off it right away. Also how many months was he OK with that and then he changes his mind on Day 1. Boy, that is a good strong willed person!!!!

What a joke as just another example of a rich guy helping out other rich people. Big deal, the rich would have lost what 10 % of their top level but no one wants to make tough choices.

PS. At worst, we could have used the extra money for the social secuity fund or the deficit.

That sounds like a joke. So he gets alot of the lower / middle bracket people to vote him in because of ideas like that and then he backs off it right away. Also how many months was he OK with that and then he changes his mind on Day 1.

His plan was always to raise taxes, repealing the Bush tax cuts when he took office.

As of now, I think his plan is to let them expire in 2011 as you say. I haven't heard a peep about keeping them longer than that, and I don't think he has any plans to do so.

Is there really $30 million in the new stimulus package devoted to saving the salt marsh mouse in Nancy Pelosi’s district?

That’s what some conservatives are now charging, and the claim seems to be gaining some traction with elected GOP officials and conservative media outlets, who are using it to argue that the bill is stuffed with Dem pork.

But there isn’t any such money in the bill. And Pelosi’s office is saying that the claim is a “total fabrication.”

How did this one get going? Yesterday a House Republican leadership staffer circulated a background email, which I obtained, charging that GOP staffers had been told by an unnamed Federal agency that if it got money from the stim package, it would spend “thirty million dollars for wetland restoration in the San Francisco Bay Area — including work to protect the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse.”

The GOP staffer’s email didn’t say what agency it was. It didn’t say the money was actually in the package — just that an unnamed agency had said they would spend it on that if they got it.

But conservatives picked up the claim and began stating as fact that the mouse money was in the bill. On Fox News yesterday, Mike Huckabee blasted the bill for containing money for Pelosi’s mouse, and today GOP Rep Dan Lundgren hammered the alleged mouse money in the bill as “absurd.” Today’s Washington Times ran with a story called: “Pelosi’s mouse slated for $30M slice of cheese.”

But I just contacted the House GOP staffer who wrote the initial email laying out this talking point, and he conceded that the claim by conservative media that the mouse money is currently in the bill is a misstatement. “There is not specific language in the legislation for this project,” he said.

There are very gew politicians that are interested in real politics and getting things right.

"With a price tag of more than $1 trillion when you factor in interest, it costs every family almost $10,000 in added debt. This is an act of generational theft that our children and grandchildren will be paying for far into the future."

Whats funny is that the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse isn't even in Pelosis(8th District) District.

[

This is the "both parties are equally bad" argument and I don't buy it. Dems aren't perfect to be sure, but they are a real party. Republicans are a mendacious bag of morally bankrupt crooks who have advocated torture, needless wars, immigrant bashing, gay-bashing, and uncontrolled spending for 8 years. And I'm talking about them as an entire party, not politician to politician.

I would remove uncontrolled spending from the list.

On the contrary. I forgot to ADD more things to the list, like their war on science, wire-tapping with no court oversight, and indefinite detentions.

Over the past week, we have have learned from the GOP that:

Money for education = "waste"
Putting $12 billion on an airplane and sending it into a war zone where it is promptly lost = "worth every penny."

In no way did that answer my charge regarding uncontrolled spending.

Your charge? You said you'd take it off the list. In order to further the debate or make a charge, you'd have to state a reason for that.

• $8 billion for high-speed railway (including an earmark for an Los Angeles to Las Vegas MagLev)
• $1 billion for the “FutureGen” not-ready-for-primetime near zero emission plant in Illinois
• $53.6 billion for the “state stabilization” slush fund
• $1.3 billion for Amtrak
• $24 million for USDA buildings and rent
• $176 million for renovating Agricultural Research Service buildings
• $290 million for flood prevention activities
• $50 million for watershed rehabilitation
• $1.4 billion for wastewater disposal programs
• $295 million for administrative expenses associated with food stamp program
• $1 billion for the 2010 Census
• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges and libraries
• $650 million for the DTV converter box coupon program
• $360 million for construction of NIST buildings
• $830 million for NOAA research and facilities
• $2 billion for Byrne JAG program
• $10 million to combat Mexican gunrunners
• $125 million for rural communities to combat drug crimes
• $1 billion for the COPS program
• $1 billion for NASA
• $300 million to purchase scientific instruments for colleges and museums
• $400 million for equipment and facilities at the NSF
• $3.7 billion to conduct "green" renovations on military bases
• $375 million for Mississippi River projects
• $10 million for urban canals
• $5 billion for weatherizing buildings
• $2 billion to develop advanced batteries for hybrid cars
• $3.4 billion for fossil energy research (possibly including an earmark for FutureGen)
• $5.1 billion for environmental cleanup around military bases
• $5.5 billion for "green" federal buildings
• $300 million for "green" cars for federal employees
• $20 million for IT upgrades at the Small Business Administration
• $200 million to design and furnish DHS headquarters
• $210 million for State and local fire stations
• $125 million to restore trails and abandoned mines
• $146 million for trail maintenance at National Park Service sites
• $140 million for volcano monitoring systems
• $600 million for the EPA Superfund environmental cleanup program
• $200 million to clean up leaking underground storage tanks
• $500 million for forest health and wildfire prevention
• $25 million for the Smithsonian Institution
• $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
• $1.2 billion for "youth activities" (for "youth" up to 24 years old)
• $500 million earmark for NIH facilities in Bethesda, MD
• $1 billion for Head Start
• $32 million for home-delivered nutrition services
• $160 million for volunteer programs at the Corporation for National and Community Service
• $500 million earmark for the SSA National Computer Center in MD
• $220 million for the International Boundary and Water Commission, U.S. and Mexico

I think the title of the thread answers that question, but since you are being purposely obtuse, here you go:

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who broke with his party to support President Obama's stimulus package last week, said before the final vote Friday that more of his colleagues would have joined were they not afraid of the political consequences.

"When I came back to the cloak room after coming to the agreement a week ago today," said Specter, "one of my colleagues said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' My Republican colleague said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' I said, 'Are you going to vote with me?' And he said, 'No, I might have a primary.' And I said, 'Well, you know very well I'm going to have a primary.'"

Specter, along with centrist Maine Republican Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, joined with Democrats last week to move the stimulus bill forward. Specter said he doubted there would be any more Republican votes than those three Friday night.

"I think there are a lot of people in the Republican caucus who are glad to see this action taken without their fingerprints, without their participation," he said.

Specter was asked, How many of your colleagues?

"I think a sizable number," he said. "I think a good part of the caucus agrees with the person I quoted, but I wouldn't want to begin to speculate on numbers."

I'm not being obtuse. You're clumsily implying that Republicans aren't a party of out-of-control spenders. I point to their 8 years in power and 6 years in control of both Congress and the White House as ample evidence to the contrary.

I make no claim that Republicans were not (and are not) a party of big spenders. Your original post was a laundry list of things Republicans did badly, therefore the implication was that things opposite those bad things were good things, where the Democrats stood. So the opposite of big spenders would be spending cutters or at least moderate spenders. My point was that Democrats too are big spenders, as this bill shows.