EconomicCrisis.US

Keeping the economy front and center, President Barack Obama heads west this week to sign the $787 billion stimulus bill and tackle the home mortgage foreclosure crisis.

The president’s determination to sign the stimulus bill into law in Denver on Tuesday suggests Obama will continue taking his economic message to the American people, who are giving him high marks for handling the crisis. The symbolism is obvious for Colorado, where a growing green-energy industry will draw major benefits from the stimulus.

“He is determined to keep in touch with the American people who sent him here to do this job,” senior adviser David Axelrod said.
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The U.S. Congress is on track for decisive votes on a $789 billion measure aimed at slowing the U.S. economic decline. The House of Representatives is to consider and vote on the bill Friday, with Senate action also expected.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as the measure is called will be on the floor on Friday.

She says it will be a major step toward creating jobs and helping halt the U.S. economic slide, while being accountable to taxpayers. “We make many votes in the Congress. They are all important. Some of them are historic. This one is historic and transformational,” he said.
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There was a chance that this week would mark a turning-point in an ever-deepening global slump, as Barack Obama produced the two main parts of his rescue plan. The first, and most argued-over, was a big fiscal boost. After a lot of bickering in Congress a final compromise stimulus bill, worth $789 billion, seemed to have been agreed on February 11th; it should be only days away from becoming law. The second, and more important, part of the rescue was team Obama’s scheme for fixing the financial mess, laid out in a speech on February 10th by Tim Geithner, the treasury secretary.
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A prominent item in Mr. Obama’s stimulus proposal now before Congress is to computerize the nation’s health care records.

It was first offered as a cost-cutting measure. Now it is revealed to be the first step in establishing a government-controlled universal health care plan. After all if you want to control one-seventh of the economy you need vast amounts of detailed information.

The idea that private insurance companies should be allowed to sell policies nationwide is not even mentioned.

Other proposals are for investments in “alternative” energy. Mr. Obama wants to subsidize increases in wind, solar, ethanol, etc., up to 20 percent of our total needs. That won’t even satisfy anticipated growth in needs.
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