Crossposted from Flopping Aces

Thought it was a milestone, that Senate vote Tuesday, right?

Wrong… Now comes the real battle and the real agenda. And if Wall Street Journal’s Greg Hitt and Jonathan Weisman are correct, you’re about to see where “just words” start wildly reverberating into ear piercing feedback in the political echo chamber.

Now comes the real battle of the “wants”: the paring down to what the power houses demand, and what they built in to the original throwaway bills that they are ready to dump for the real thing.

So let’s start with that bit about trimming the pork… Nope. Not gonna happen. All those number games? Now it’s a battle to add back into the Senate bill much of what they trimmed away just to get it to pass.

The White House is seeking to restore funding cut by the Senate for schools, health insurance and computerizing health records as the economic-stimulus plan headed into a final round of negotiations in Congress, with top lawmakers struggling to bring the price of the two-year package down to $800 billion.

~~~

To make room for added spending, the White House, joined by House Democratic leaders, is pressing to scale back certain Senate-passed tax breaks, including measures intended to boost auto and home sales.

[Mata Musing: uh... isn't home sales the foundation of our problems,
and the key to our cure? And how about them auto jobs??]

White House officials said they can hold on to support for the package, even if spending is increased as a share of the total plan. “We don’t think it’s that precarious,” one administration official said.

That’s nice… even tho it’s more expensive, the WH says they can deal with that. But then, easy to say about someone else’s money, isn’t it?

Make note the dawn’s reality. The olive branch of tax cuts is happily offered up as the sacrificial lamb for increased spending on schools, health insurance and the not-so-widely-disclosed health provisions.

Welcome to the Obama/Pelosi/Reid prozac nation of mistruths and BS.

In the meantime, Obama was busy using the duped Florida Gov. Charlie Crist as a willing dummy to his ventroloquist show that this whole pile of manure they call “stimulus” is bipartisan.

Bipartisan???

Bipartisan is a moot point… the House Republicans don’t even need to show up… their votes aren’t needed.

But in the Senate, they need at least two Republicans… assuming Kennedy shows up to vote. And I doubt he’s missing this one.

But Snowe and Collins each have their own price for selling out their political souls, their constituents, and the US economy. For Snowe, it’s small-business tax breaks and a measure ensuring that unemployment benefits are tax-free for “some” workers.

Uh… Olympia…. who’s the “some” you speak of, please?

For Susan Collins, it’s all about numbers. This not-so-bright light bulb sees $800 bil as the magic number. Apparently what comprises that number doesn’t matter to her.

uh hummmmm

The third RINO on the Dem pork wagon, Arlen Specter, insists that the bill come back “intact” as sent in. This despite the fact that he said only yesterday:

Specter said he has protested the rush to judgment, but “the only answer we get is that the situation is so dire, such an emergency, we have to act.” Specter, asked if he would now put a stop to the bill or at least slow it down, indicated that he would not.

“Listen, this legislation is a bitter pill to swallow. But we are facing a situation where the current economic problems could turn into another depression like 1929.” He said he would not change his “yes” vote.

I guess that threat of “intact” doesn’t have much bite to it, as he’s already said he’d commit… and would not change his “yes” vote. So either Collins or Snowe has the option to cave, and still Obama and the Senate Dems are granted their spending spree with not so much as an offending fart on the breeze to mar the air in the chamber.

In the meantime, count all those lobbyists… er, “advocacy groups”… to be close by for last minute pressure on the elected ones to pork it back up while the porking is good.

In retrospect, it’s hard to believe it was just one year ago on Feb 11th that Bush signed in the $170 billion stimulus package passed by the Dem Congress. In addition to the checks in the mail to the taxpayers, it included tax breaks for equipment purchases by businesses, as well as payments to disabled veterans and some senior citizens.

That bill went thru at what the media called “breakneck speed”… uh, that’s four weeks, folks.

Oh what a difference a year makes. And they thought no one would ever miss Bush….

Also:

TRANSPARENCY ABANDONED: Obama and Dems Break Promise to Put Stimulus Online

THE LIE

At his meeting with bipartisan leaders of Congress, Obama said he would make his stimulus proposal available on the Internet, with a Google-like search function to show each proposed project or program, by congressional district, according to three people who attended.

THE REALITY

In a press conference Thursday, the House Republican leadership spoke candidly about being kept out of the House-Senate conference on the Obama-Pelosi-Reid so-called “economic stimulus” bill. They confirmed they had not yet seen the text of the bill as of 4 p.m.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he was unsure how many Democrats would vote with Republicans again on this bill but that he thought Republicans “may get a few” Democrats to side with them. The fact that the Demos have now broken their promise to have the public able to see the bill for 48 hours may drive more Dems into the Republican camp.

“[I] don’t know, ‘cause they haven’t seen the bill either,” Boehner said. “The American people have a right to know what’s in this bill,” Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind) told HUMAN EVENTS after the press conference. “Every member of Congress — Republicans and Democrats — voted to post this bill on the internet for 48 hours, 48 hours ago. We’ll see if the Democrats keep their word.”

For some completely unknown reason (I just can’t possibly imagine) MSNBC has not followed up on its own article by asking Democrats what happened to the 48hr online review?

So, who DOES know what’s in the bill that Congress is going to approve? Congress doesn’t. Lobbyists do