Someone better let notorious beauty queen Maxine Waters know that President Obama is already all over creating or saving millions and millions of jobs. Rep. Waters is under the mistaken impression that jobs are suddenly a problem:“It does not appear that there is any real hope in sight for new job creation and for jobs for the people that need them perhaps the most,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)
This sudden revelation has inspired a "disparate group of lawmakers" to extend portions of the stimulus to the tune of a mere $88 billion or so. Approximately $65 billion of that total is being sought by Rep. Waters and a few other Democrats to extend unemployment and COBRA benefits set to expire at year's end when the stimulus was sure to have brought the economy back from the abyss.
In the House Republican Representative Patrick Tiberi (R-Ohio) is co-sponsoring a bill with Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), to extend a carryback provision that allows businesses to carry back losses to past tax returns, and other expiring provisions such as the homebuyer tax credit which has permitted an increase in home sales. A similar effort is being pushed in the Senate by Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Olympia Snowe.(R-Maine)
Senator Snowe teamed with several other hard line conservatives giving the votes needed to pass the stimulus legislation that is obviously such a banner success it demands an encore. While I won't profess to have the legislative prowess of the group that is responsible for Stimulus I, I can't help but wonder if it ever crossed any of their brilliant minds to do something really crazy like cancelling some of the pork/porn from the first monstrosity and use it in ways that proved to be, well, stimulating.
Useful as in forgiving law student debts or partial cancelling some of the debt so as to free money for other spending like a house? That would stimulate me.
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