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Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2009 | 2:08 a.m.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., has been an outspoken critic of the stimulus bill and voted against the plan that passed the Senate on Tuesday. As part of his criticism, he has targeted a provision in the bill that would send money to state governments — including Nevada — to keep them solvent.
On “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Ensign said the provision would allow states to overspend.
“It sends the money to the states, and not only do we have them not have to make the tough cuts that they should be making, we actually encourage them to spend more because to be able to get the money, they have to spend more,” Ensign complained. “And this just encourages more wasteful spending.”
As David McGrath Schwartz reported in Tuesday’s Las Vegas Sun, Ensign has called Nevada’s spending “obscene.” That may come as a shock to many Nevadans whom Ensign represents, including Republicans.
State Sen. Randolph Townsend, R-Reno, said in more than 25 years in the Senate, “very rarely have I seen wasteful spending.”
This year that is painfully obvious. The budget that Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons presented to the Legislature gutted state spending — beyond the typical bare-bones proposal. Gibbons and lawmakers are hoping for stimulus money to keep the state from having to slash education and other critical services.
What the Republican ideologues in Congress have failed to understand is the magnitude of the economic recession in their home states. The Legislature is trying to deal with a $2.3 billion deficit that threatens to decimate necessary services in Nevada.
“The notion that we have some kind of fat, bloated budget that can be trimmed is simply wrong,” Gibbons’ spokesman Dan Burns said. “The budget we have submitted is bare bones. We make cuts we don’t want to make.”
Indeed. Ensign and his fellow Senate objectors should put their ideology down and listen to their constituents who are hurting. They’ll find that people need the type of help found in the stimulus bill, not political rhetoric.
Or maybe this newspaper is out of touch with economics? The stimulus bill, at best, will do nothing for the country. At its worst, the money will fund pork projects killing jobs in productive sectors of our economy, reducing our wealth and increasing unemployment.
Harry Reid is Out of Touch with Nevada
Harry Reid's ideas are as empty of content as the UNLV Harry Reid Research and Technology Park
at Durango and Sunset.
The Nevada State Legislature leaders Horsford, Buckley, Raggio and Governor Gibbons on 2-6-2009 in a video conference call asked Harry Reid to add a waiver process to the "maintenance of effort" requirement to get Stimulus II education funding and were told by Harry Reid" You are crying wolf at the door" Is this going to be a package that everyone loves? Of course not."
Basically Harry Reid says do not question, shut up, and just sign on.
As part of the Reid-Pelosi Stimulus II borrow and welfare spending package Harry Reid put $2 billion dollars to push forward on the FutureGen demonstration of new clean coal power plants by using advanced carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.
The new plant will be built in Illinois (not in Ely Nevada) providing the south side of Chicago with cheap subsided power.
Harry Reid continues to ignore hydrogen fuel cells (http://www.energy.gov/energysources/hydr...) that avoid these issues and are very local in nature.
Thank you Harry Reid for a 17.5 percent electricity increase.
A January 2009 interview Harry Reid commented that he wants to scrape the Medicare Advantage Program. More than 10 million elderly are enrolled including 100,000 in Nevada
Will Reid push for the business busting check-card union law?
Will Reid promote liberal causes such as Abortions with no restriction or limit?
What kind of Supreme Court Judges will Harry Reid approve?
As part of the Reid-Pelosi Stimulus II borrow and welfare spending package Harry Reid included $4 billion for ACORN and likeminded Democratic service organizations.
Showing his contempt for the people in the "People's House" Reid's take at the official dedication for the Capitol Visitor Center 12-2-2008, as he quipped that "In the summertime, because the high humidity and how hot it gets here, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol."
What were Senate Minority Leader Reid's and Dodd's role in preventing regulation of Fannie and Freddie purchase of subprime mortgages in 2005? Why did Democrats not support the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190?
What was Senate Majority Leader Reid and Democrats doing while the economy went into a depression from 2006 to 2008? Why was no action taken for underwater homeowner in the June 9, 2008, Federal Housing Finance Regulatory Reform Act of 2008?
Senate Majority Leader Reid said the war in Iraq was lost and did not support troop funding. Reid has disapproved of Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus, disapproved the Petraeus designed Surge operation (because he said it would fail), and refused to approve funding for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ensign is in touch with good business sense!
Why should this small state pick up the tab for bailing out a state like California which is in debt up to its ears, overwhelmed by ridiculous
policies that encourage illegal immigrants to pour over the border like rats leaving a sinking ship, and paying for all their welfare costs!
Do you really want Nevadans to pay through the nose for this --I don't! And how about the new health plank in the stimulus package that will "ensure" that your doctor is "assisted" by the feds in administering your health at the "time and place" of your treatment--no thanks to federal meddling in my medical treatment. I encourage Senator Ensign to fight these planks in the stimulus package, and other similarly unacceptable provisions that will waste money and infringe on Nevadans rights and financial interests.
Nice post, Future.
Neither of our Sinators have a clue about what's happening here, especially Reid who is raising obscene amounts of PAC money while doing absolutely nothing for NevaDUH. http://texex-xpress.blogspot.com/2009/01...
Is Bernie Madoff writing the stimulus plan? I thought we got here from over spending and over lending through out the economy.. How do we fix it by borrowing more and spending more.
Was the press ever neutral? Because this paper sure isn't. It's so old reading or hearing that stale statement about putting ideology aside and listen to the people. Didn't the president say something along those lines the other night? Easy to say when one party is in control. It seems this stimulus plan is full of ideological crap.