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Monday, June 14, 2010 4:10 AM


Obama Once Again Wants to Buy Union Votes with Your Tax Dollars


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Private citizens have had enough of overpaid, underworked, public employees with benefits most private workers can only dream about.

Unfortunately, President Obama has not gotten the message (and likely won't until he is kicked out of office). Time and time again, president Obama has proven that he is beholden to public unions no matter how unjustified the cost.

Now President Obama is asking for $50 billion more taxpayer dollars, your dollars, to dole out to the states, in an effort to buy votes or simply because he is economically illiterate. Most likely, it is a combination of both.

Please consider this letter from Obama to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Senate leaders of both parties.

The president whines about losing 84,000 government jobs at the state and local level. I consider that a 5% down payment on what needs to happen.

Obama Begs for More of Your Money

The Washington Post sums up the situation nicely in Obama pleads for $50 billion in state, local aid

President Obama urged reluctant lawmakers Saturday to quickly approve nearly $50 billion in emergency aid to state and local governments, saying the money is needed to avoid "massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters" and to support the still-fragile economic recovery.

In a letter to congressional leaders, Obama defended last year's huge economic stimulus package, saying it helped break the economy's free fall, but argued that more spending is urgent and unavoidable. "We must take these emergency measures," he wrote in an appeal aimed primarily at members of his own party.

"I think there is spending fatigue," House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said recently. "It's tough in both houses to get votes."

Democrats, particularly in the House, have voted for politically costly initiatives at Obama's insistence, most notably health-care and climate change legislation. But faced with an electorate widely viewed as angry and hostile to incumbents, many are increasingly reluctant to take politically unpopular positions.

The House last month stripped Obama's request for $24 billion in state aid from a bill that would extend emergency benefits for jobless workers. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) hopes to restore that funding but with debate in that chamber set to resume this week, he acknowledges that he has yet to assemble the votes for final passage. Obama's request for $23 billion to avert the layoffs of as many as 300,000 public school teachers has not won support in either chamber.

Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), called the letter full of "contradictions."

"He's calling on Congress to pass a [jobless] bill that will add about $80 billion to the deficit, but then calls for fiscal discipline; he says these measures need to be targeted and temporary, but then calls for extending programs passed in the stimulus more than a year ago," Stewart said in an e-mail.
Overpaid Unions Workers Need To Share The pain

If President Obama has any sense of fiscal responsibility he would be calling on public unions to share the pain. Government works almost entirely escaped the pain most in the private sector have gone through.

We lost 8 million private sector jobs in the recession, and a few hundred thousand public sector jobs are now at stake. Instead of asking overpaid, underworked public union workers to share in the pain, Obama want to tax to death everyone else to pay for it.

Send a Message

It is time to send a message and the way to do it is to vote against any incumbent from either party who just cannot say no to this fiscal madness.

What You Can Do

Please call your legislative representative and tell them the problem is too much government spending, unions are wrecking the country, and if they vote for more taxpayer sponsored bailouts of public union workers or more state aid, then you will vote them out of office.

Tell your representatives you are against spending $50 billion more on states and that it is long overdue for government workers share the pain and that it's time for states to fix their budget messes without more Federal handouts and taxpayer dollars.

Here is a directory sorted by state of all the Senators of the 111th Congress.

You can also look up the phone numbers in the Online Directory For The 111th Congress

Bear in mind, not a single job is really at stake. All the unions have to do to keep every jobs is lower pay scales or reduce benefits. Instead, they want everyone else to pitch in to pay for their bloated salaries and their bloated pensions.

Enough is enough.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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