Thirty-three billion dollar "supplemental" for Afghanistan.
Nothing for unemployed American workers who have been stiffed by CAFTA, NAFTA and other international free trade agreements which resulted in outsourcing good-paying American jobs to Mexico, China, Vietnam, India and elsewhere.
As a result of a lack of congressional foresight in a national rush to sign a multitude of global free trade agreements, good-paying American jobs have been outsourced, the bulk of American manufacturing, a key determinant of America's economic strength and security, not to mention that manufacturing real and solid goods serves as a job-creation engine which in turn serves as regional income-producing and tax income producing engine, American manufacturing has been thrown to foreign wolves.
The loss of American manufacturing has also been a key factor in diminishing America’s role as a world leader, factoring in its growing trade imbalance and its rapidly growing indebtedness to other nations.
Once upon a time America was a creditor, not a debtor nation, but American legislators slurped an enormous amount of Reaganomics Kool-Aid and sold the United States of America out from under its citizens, its working and its taxpayers.
Both Democratic and Republican congresspeople and senators must stop drinking Reaganomics Kool-Aid and start looking out for the nation and the nation's citizens which they are supposed to represent.
Heedless war spending is adding to America's deficit, is doing nothing to lift America from the Reaganomic quagmire which has rotted that nation’s infrastructure, gutted its system of education and left it in near poverty. We need to stop this downward spiral and we need to stop it now.
Will the House and the U.S. Senate work in that direction, for their nation, for their constituents?
Or will they continue to work on behalf of giant multinational corporations who care nothing at all for the welfare of the United States of America and the real people who live in the U.S.?
And now, Senate Republicans and good old Republicrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska are playing politics with unemployment extension:
.... One part extends the insurance programs that deal with the long-term unemployed. Another extends the $25 boost to unemployment insurance checks that we've had in place since the beginning of the recession. And a third allows workers who find part-time work but need full-time work to remain eligible for some unemployment benefits.
.... The bill also has a raft of tax cuts and investments, including billions for the Small Business Administration to offer more loans to small businesses, bonds to fund infrastructure development, money to encourage private-sector R&D. and more.... Those modification documents are important, because Democrats have made a lot of changes to the bill in response to Republican opposition. The total cost went from $200 billion to about $110 billion. The bill went from being deficit-funded -- which is what you want for stimulus -- to largely paid for, with only the $30 billion or so in unemployment benefits adding to the deficit. The $25 addition to unemployment checks was eliminated, and states now have to pay more for Medicaid, adding to their budget woes. The bill, in other words, has been made smaller and weaker. And that's despite 9.7 percent unemployment.
And still, it looks like Democrats might lose the vote today... All Republicans, and possibly Ben Nelson, appear to remain opposed. And why not? The less that Democrats appear to be doing on jobs -- and the fewer jobs that Democrats actually create -- the better Republicans will do in November....
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/...