Obama; Banks Repaying $68 Billion in Bailout Funds-- At a Profit to Govt.
President Barack Obama reports today that a number of banks which received bailout funds will be paying back $68 billion dollars.
Discusses getting rid of no-bid contracts, revising military spending, tightening medicare ... and he calls for restoring PayGo-- the pay as you go rule. Paygo is the mantra of the Bluedog Democrats. It means that only spending that has clear cut source of funding will be allowed.
Obama, calling for the congressional codification of paygo, thanked house bluedogs, Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi and Claire McCaskill, "who showed real leadership in the senate."
Observing, "The reckless fiscal policies of the past have left us in a deep hole." he said that he wants paygo in place so members of congress keep in mind the "fiscal horizon."
flickr image by DangerRanger
This is a brilliant two pronged response to the Republican attack machine, showing that the bailout is not thrown away money, on the contrary, that it is bringing a profit to the government. Actually, the profit is probably more that these banks have ever paid in taxes in a given year. And the PAYGO policy, which Bush blocked, makes it hard for Republicans to talk about "tax and spend" liberals.
Ironically, this may mean that Obama's mish mosh, corporate health care plan will not pass PayGo muster, while single payer is generally believed to pay for itself, including creating over two million new jobs. Could this be a strategy that forces bluedogs to back single payer? Not likely, but possible. This man plays chess not checkers.
Another consideration is that Obama's new move may be a bone he's thrown to the blue dogs to persuade them to pass the health care plan he's pushing. They give him a plan with a public option. They get a huge victory on the fiscal responsibility front.
One thing is clear. This press conference said and did a lot more than was said and done on the surface.
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
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