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Entries Tagged as 'Trying to get somthing for nothing'

Senate spending bill contains thousands of earmarks

December 15th, 2010 · Accountability, Congress, Corruption, Democrats, Dissention, Economy, Ethics, Federal Spending, Fraud Alert, Greed, Non-Transparency, Republicans, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Terrorism from Within

By Philip Rucker and Paul Kane Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 15, 2010; 12:00 AM

Weeks after swearing off earmarks, many senators stand to gain tens of millions of dollars for pet projects in a massive spending bill that could be their last chance at the money before a more conservative Congress begins next month.

The $1.2 trillion bill, released on Tuesday, includes more than 6,000 earmarks totaling $8 billion, an amount that many lawmakers decried as an irresponsible binge following a midterm election in which many voters demanded that the government cut spending.

“The American people said just 42 days ago, ‘Enough!’ . . . Are we tone deaf? Are we stricken with amnesia?” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a leading earmark critic, said on the Senate floor, flipping through the 1,924-page bill as he pounded his desk.

The bill includes $18 million for two nonprofits associated with deceased Democrats, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and Rep. John P. Murtha; $349,000 for swine waste management in North Carolina; and $6 million for a rural Iowa school program named after Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) epitomizes the conflicted nature of the debate. Formerly a member of the committee that doles out earmarks, McConnell reluctantly embraced a moratorium on the practice last month to send a signal that Republicans are serious about curbing spending.

Yet the legislation includes provisions requested this year by McConnell, including $650,000 for a genetic technology center at the University of Kentucky, according to an analysis of the bill by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog.

Saying he was now “vigorously in opposition” to the legislation, McConnell said Tuesday that rushed consideration of the bill “here on Christmas Eve” compelled him to try to block the bill through a filibuster. “I’m going to vote against things that arguably would benefit my state. I do not think this is the appropriate way to run the Senate,” he said.

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Inmates get fraudulent tax refunds behind bars, report says

December 2nd, 2010 · Economy, Fraud Alert, Taxes, Treasury

By Ed O’Keefe

Jail cells might keep inmates from escaping, but don’t appear to stop some from filing fraudulent tax returns.

More than 48,800 of the nation’s prisoners claimed $130 million in fraudulent tax refunds by March of this year, and the numbers are probably much higher, according to a new watchdog report. The IRS paid $112 million of the claims, a small fraction of the $326 billion in refunds so far this year.

But the number of fraudulent payments made to inmates has climbed 37 percent since 2004, said the report, which also acknowledged that the rise is partly a result of increased detection and enforcement by the IRS.

The IRS doesn’t screen most prisoners’ tax returns, according to the report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), set for release Thursday. A review of tax records found that 88 percent of the 287,918 returns filed by prisoners by late March were not screened for potential fraud. Of those, about 48,800 returns lacked wage information reported to the IRS by employers, the report said.

“There is a major problem with returns being filed fraudulently by people who are incarcerated,” TIGTA Inspector General J. Russell George said in an interview. “What makes this even more problematic is that we identified this as a problem more than five years ago. The problem not only persists, it’s gotten even worse.”

In 2005, TIGTA found that 18,000 prisoners had filed fraudulent returns in 2004. The report prompted a 2008 law that now requires George’s office to file regular updates on prison-based tax fraud. The number of bad claims has climbed because the IRS has stepped up detection and enforcement, as well as because a higher number of prisoners are making fraudulent claims, TIGTA and IRS officials said Thursday.

The IRS “is making very good progress” in identifying cases of fraud, George said. Overall, in the general population, the agency stopped almost 250,000 fraudulent returns totaling $1.48 billion through March, double the number from the 2009 filing season.

“The IRS takes refund fraud seriously and has programs in place to aggressively combat it,” agency spokesman Terry Lemons said in a statement. Tracking prison fraud “is not a simple process, particularly considering the fact that some inmates and their families are legally entitled to tax refunds and that the prisoner population is constantly changing,” he said.

The agency is working with state and federal officials to ensure timely updates and last summer met with federal prison officials to improve detection and prevention of prisoner fraud, he said.

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Democrat Senate shuns push for elimination of pet projects: Votes for Money Stealing.

November 30th, 2010 · Accountability, Deception, Democrats, Economy, Ethics, Federal Spending, Greed, Non-Transparency, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Terrorism from Within

By ANDREW TAYLOR – The Associated Press
Tuesday, November 30, 2010; 11:41 AM

WASHINGTON — The Senate Tuesday rejected a GOP bid to ban the practice of larding spending bills with earmarks – those pet projects that lawmakers love to send home to their states.

Most Democrats and a handful of Republicans combined to defeat the effort, which would have effectively forbidden the Senate from considering legislation containing earmarks like road and bridge projects, community development funding, grants to local police departments and special-interest tax breaks.

The 39-56 tally, however, was a better showing for earmark opponents, who lost a 29-68 vote earlier this year. Any votes next year should be closer because a band of anti-earmark Republicans is joining the Senate.

Earlier this month, Republicans bowed to tea party activists and passed a party resolution declaring GOP senators would give up earmarks. House Republicans have also given up the practice, but most Democrats say earmarks are a legitimate way to direct taxpayer money to their constituents.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Tuesday that Democrats had made the earmarking process far more transparent than it previously had been under GOP control of Congress. The reforms include requiring lawmakers to document every projects they seek and receive.

Seven Democrats voted with all but eight Republicans to ban the practice.

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Bowing to growing budget concerns, Obama announces 2-year pay freeze for federal workers.

November 29th, 2010 · Accountability, Economy, Federal Spending, Government

By Ed O’Keefe, Perry Bacon and Joe Davidson

Bowing to growing budget concerns and months of Republican political pressure on federal pay and benefits, President Obama today announced he would stop pay increases for most of the two million people who work for the federal government.

The freeze applies to all Executive Branch workers — including civilian employees of the Defense Department, but does not apply to military personnel, government contractors, postal workers, members of Congress, Congressional staffers, or federal court judges and workers.

“Getting this deficit under control is going to require some broad sacrifices and that sacrifice must be shared by the employees of the federal government,” Obama said in a speech Monday afternoon explaining the decision. He added, “I did not reach this decision easily, this is not a line item on a federal ledger, these are people’s lives.”

The freeze would take effect on Jan. 1, pending Congressional approval by the end of this year. The 2012 pay freeze will be proposed as part of fiscal 2012 budget proposals to be unveiled early next year.

The pay change will not impact bonuses for federal workers or when a federal worker is promoted to a new level of pay, meaning federal workers promoted in the next two years will receive a new level of pay, but not receive any additional annual raises.

Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said she disagreed with Obama’s decision.

The union “is mindful of our nation’s economic circumstances, but we are very disappointed with the White House’s position and intend to explore all of our options, including working with Congress to overturn it,” Kelley said. The union represents more than 150,000 federal employees nationwide.

John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, blasted the announcement, calling it “a superficial, panicked reaction to the deficit commission report.”

“This pay freeze amounts to nothing more than political public relations,” Gage said in a statement, suggesting government nurses, border patrol agents and other personnel are being unfairly targeted for Democratic election losses.

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Obama administration gives billions in stimulus money without environmental safeguards

November 29th, 2010 · Accountability, Deception, Democrats, Economy, Environment, Federal Spending, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Stimulus

By Kristen Lombardi and John Solomon – Center for Public Integrity
Sunday, November 28, 2010; 9:41 PM

In the name of job creation and clean energy, the Obama administration has doled out about $2 billion in stimulus money to some of the nation’s biggest polluters while granting them exemptions from a basic form of environmental oversight, a Center for Public Integrity investigation has found.

The administration has awarded more than 179,000 “categorical exclusions” to stimulus projects funded by federal agencies, freeing the projects from review under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. Officials said they did not consider companies’ pollution records in deciding whether to grant the waivers. They said that creating jobs quickly was an important part of the stimulus plan, and that past environmental violations should not disqualify a company from pursuing federal contracts for unrelated projects.

The projects include:

- An electrical-grid upgrade project in Kansas led by Westar Energy, the state’s largest coal-burning utility, which settled a major air pollution case by paying half a billion dollars in penalties and remediation costs. The Energy Department granted the NEPA waiver to Westar’s project, funded by a $19 million stimulus grant that was approved on the same day the settlement became official. Westar considers its “smart grid” project to be “our basic,standard, above-ground upgrade,” said Brad Loveless, the company’s environmental director. “From everybody’s perspective, there really wasn’t the potential for smart grid to have environmental problems.”

- A wind farm project in Texas, as well as an electrical-grid upgrade project in five additional states, undertaken by Duke Energy. The department granted the NEPA waiver to both Duke projects, funded by a combined $226 million in stimulus grants, even as the energy corporation continues its decade-long defense against two of the largest air pollution cases involving coal utilities in the nation’s history. “We’re basically adding communication infrastructure on top of what is already there so it is not disturbing the environment,” Duke’s Paige Layne said.

- A project to create clean-burning biofuel from seaweed led by chemical giant DuPont, which received $8.9 million in stimulus funds in February. That amount nearly equals the environmental fine DuPont paid in 2005 for hiding the dangers of its toxic chemical known as C8 from federal regulators for two decades. In a statement, DuPont stressed that it “has not applied for an environmental exclusion” for its project, but rather is “following the necessary process set forth by the Department of Energy.” It concludes, “Each project that we work on includes, by our own policy, a comprehensive and individualized product stewardship program.”

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Fed lowers economic expectations for 2011

November 24th, 2010 · Deception, Dissention, Economy, Federal Spending, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars

By Neil Irwin Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 24, 2010; 12:40 AM

Unemployment is set to remain higher for longer than previously thought, according to new projections from the Federal Reserve that would mean more than 10 million Americans remain jobless through the 2012 elections – even as a separate report shows corporate profits reaching their highest levels ever.

Top Federal Reserve officials project that the unemployment rate, now 9.6 percent, will fall only to about 9 percent at the end of 2011 and about 8 percent when the next presidential election arrives, in late 2012. The central bankers had envisioned a more rapid decline in joblessness in their previous forecasts, prepared in June.

The sober economic forecast comes despite signs that the recovery is picking up slightly. The Commerce Department said Tuesday that gross domestic product rose at a 2.5 percent annual rate in the three months ending in September, not 2 percent as earlier estimated. And there have been solid readings in recent weeks on job creation, manufacturing and retail.

The apparent contradiction reflects the brutal math that faces a nation trying claw out of a deep recession: Moderate growth, which would be fine in normal times, will do little to bring down sky-high joblessness, a reality reflected in the Fed’s forecasts.

Even as conditions are likely to remain miserable for job seekers for years to come, an extraordinary bounce-back is underway in the nation’s corporate sector, with profits rebounding 28 percent over the past year to an all-time high in the third quarter.

Businesses’ spending on compensation for employees, by contrast, rose only 7.6 percent.

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House panel rejects Rangel’s request to delay corruption trial.

November 15th, 2010 · Accountability, Corruption, Democrats, Ethics, House

By Paul Kane Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 15, 2010; 10:35 AM

Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) pleaded with a House panel Monday to delay his long-awaited public trial on corruption charges, saying he needed time to find a new lawyer, but his request was rejected and the session went ahead without him.

The trial, conducted by an eight-member panel of Rangel’s congressional peers, is the first of its kind since 2002. Rangel faces allegations that he broke congressional rules in his personal finances and his fundraising efforts for a New York college. He and his previous legal team parted ways in September.

“I object to the proceeding,” Rangel told the House panel. “With all due respect, since I don’t have counsel to advise me, I’m going to have to excuse myself from these proceedings.”

He said he cannot afford a lawyer at present because his campaign account has been depleted.

The panel then went into closed session to consider the requested delay. The lawmakers later emerged and said the trial would go ahead.

Rangel asked that he be allowed to accept either pro bono legal work or reduced-fee support, but such actions might violate congressional rules forbidding gifts. Abbe Lowell, one of Washington’s premier white-collar defense lawyers, attended the hearing and said during the break that he would join Rangel’s defense if the panel postponed the hearing to allow Rangel time to raise money to pay Lowell’s fees.

Rangel has already burned through $2 million in legal fees, draining funds from his now wiped-out campaign account. When he told his former legal team that he would not be able to pay the estimated $1 million to finish the case, they withdrew from the case, he said Monday. He now wants to set up a separate legal defense fund that could provide legal support, but it may take weeks or months to finance the operation.

“I am being denied the right to have a lawyer,” he complained. He argued that “50 years of public service is on the line.”

The 40-year House veteran arrived in the hearing room inside the Longworth House Office Building precisely at 9 a.m., the scheduled start time, with his wife and other family members trailing behind.

He sat at a desk in front of the dais, in a room that is usually reserved for the House Administration Committee, which oversees mostly mundane matters of internal congressional management. Winking at photographers, Rangel brought with him some yellow legal pads, pens and a massive binder containing the case against him.

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Junior Democrats in Senate seek to change the way chamber does business

November 15th, 2010 · Democrats, Dissention, Senate

By Shailagh Murray Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 15, 2010; 12:34 AM

Senate Democrats are expected to elect the same party veterans as their leaders when they return to work this week, but a new class of junior lawmakers is exerting its influence by challenging the chamber’s sacred traditions and the partisan, top-down governing style that has marked the past two years.

The young Democrats, many of whom will be on the ballot in 2012, reject the view that the Senate must move at a glacial pace, that only its most senior members get to determine the policy agenda, and that bipartisanship has become the purview of the naive and nostalgic.

“In the last election, voters said, ‘Please work together.’ I think they’re going to move next to profanities,” said Sen. Mark Udall (Colo.), a member of the Class of 2008.

Upstarts such as Udall, his cousin Tom Udall (N.M.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Mark Warner (Va.) are expected to wage a fresh campaign to change Senate operating procedures and give first-term lawmakers a greater say over Democratic strategy and how the party communicates with voters.

To amplify the voice of Democratic freshmen, Senate leaders are considering elevating at least one newcomer to senior ranks. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) asked Sen. Michael Bennet (Colo.), who survived a bruising 2010 challenge, to lead the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for the 2012 campaign cycle. That would have given Bennet a seat at leadership meetings – along with responsibility for a potentially brutal election cycle, with 23 incumbent Democrats on the ballot, compared with 10 Republicans. But Bennet, who has three young children, turned down the job.

A top goal for ’06 and ’08 Democrats is to change Senate rules that allow a single member of the minority party to prevent legislation from advancing. They want the Senate to take a more entrepreneurial approach to crafting bills, rather than falling back on the same veteran chairmen and their pet policy prescriptions. And they are unwilling to write off Republicans, viewing the opposition as the linchpin to advancing Democratic goals.

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Obama’s deficit commission proposing to reduce the annual cost-of-living increases in Social Security.

November 10th, 2010 · Deception, Greed, Non-Transparency, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Social Security

By ANDREW TAYLOR – The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 10, 2010; 1:24 PM

WASHINGTON — Leaders of President Barack Obama‘s bipartisan deficit commission on Wednesday proposed reducing the annual cost-of-living increases in Social Security, part of a bold plan to control $1 trillion-plus budget deficits.

The proposal also would set a tough target for curbing the growth of Medicare and recommends looking at eliminating popular tax breaks, such as mortgage interest deduction.

As proposed, the plan by Chairman Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., doesn’t look like it can win support from 14 of the commission’s 18 members to force a debate in Congress. Bowles is a Democrat and was former President Bill Clinton‘s White House chief of staff.

Cuts to Social Security and Medicare are making some liberals on the panel recoil. And conservative Republicans are having difficulty with options on how to raise tax revenue. The plan also calls for cuts in farm subsidies, foreign aid and the Pentagon’s budget.

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House Democrats could have same leadership team despite 60-seat loss

November 8th, 2010 · Accountability, Deception, Democrats, Dissention, Greed, Non-Transparency, Politics

Thank you America, may I have another?

By Paul Kane -Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 7, 2010; 8:05 PM

House Democratic leaders signaled a desire Sunday to avoid internal leadership battles in an effort to forge party unity, a move that would leave the same team in place that oversaw the worst political rout in 72 years.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.) said that efforts are underway to avert an ideological leadership campaign that would pit House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (Md.) and Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (S.C.) against each other for the position of minority whip.

Hoyer, 71, has been considered the leadership’s bridge to conservative Democrats and Clyburn, 70, is the highest-ranking African American congressman ever. They spent the weekend making calls in an effort to secure enough votes for the No. 2 leadership post after the decision by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) to remain in power next year as minority leader.

“They’re both going to be at the table, I’m absolutely convinced, in terms of helping provide guidance,” Van Hollen, a Pelosi ally, said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that some accommodation will be made to keep Hoyer and Clyburn in leadership positions. “I’m confident that the members of the caucus recognize that both gentlemen bring an enormous amount to the job, and we will work it out.”

Soon to be out of power, House Democrats are trying to map out their future with one fewer spot among leaders because the hierarchy gives the majority an additional spot, based on who holds the speaker’s gavel. With Pelosi, 70, still unchallenged, moderates who survived Tuesday’s midterm elections desperately want to keep Hoyer’s voice inside a leadership group that is otherwise dominated by liberals. The more than 40 members of the Congressional Black Caucus do not want Clyburn ejected, either.

Pelosi’s leadership team faces what could be an equally problematic issue. Many rank-and-file Democrats are enraged about the loss of 60 or more seats. Some are also disenchanted with the leaders in their 70s who have served in the top three spots for the past five years, with Pelosi and Hoyer being Nos. 1 and 2 for the past eight years, according to interviews with lawmakers, top aides and outside advisers.

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