Yahoo! News (Link) - AP (February 14, 2009) Comments
President Barack Obama, savoring his first major victory in Congress, said Saturday that newly passed $787 billion economic stimulus legislation marks a "major milestone on our road to recovery." Speaking in his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama said, "I will sign this legislation into law shortly, and we'll begin making the immediate investments necessary to put people back to work doing the work America needs done."
At the same time, he cautioned, "This historic step won't be the end of what we do to turn our economy around, but rather the beginning. The problems that led us into this crisis are deep and widespread, and our response must be equal to the task."
The bill passed Congress on Friday on party-line votes, allowing Democratic leaders to deliver on their promise of clearing the legislation by mid-February. Obama "now has a bill to sign that will create millions of good-paying jobs and help families and businesses stay afloat financially," said Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat who was a leading architect of the measure. "It will shore up our schools and roads and bridges, and infuse cash into new sectors like green energy and technology that will sustain our economy for the long term," he added in a statement.
Hours earlier, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell offered a different prediction for a bill he said was loaded with wasteful spending. "A stimulus bill that was supposed to be timely, targeted and temporary is none of the above," he said in remarks on the Senate floor. "And this means Congress is about to approve a stimulus that's unlikely to have much stimulative effect."
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, in the GOP radio address Saturday, contended Democrats settled "on a random dollar amount in the neighborhood of $1 trillion and then set out to fill the bucket."
In a struggle lasting several weeks, lawmakers in the two political parties both emphasized they wanted to pass legislation to revitalize the economy and ease frozen credit markets. But the plan that the administration and its allies eventually came up drew the support of only three Republicans in Congress — moderate Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
Their support was critical, though, in helping the bill squeak through the Senate on a vote of 60-38, precisely the number needed for passage. Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown cast the 60th vote in favor in a nearly deserted Senate, hours after the roll call began. He arrived after a flight aboard a government plane from Ohio, where he was mourning the death of his mother earlier in the week. The House vote was 246-183.
The legislation, among the costliest ever considered in Congress, provides billions of dollars to aid victims of the recession through unemployment benefits, food stamps, medical care, job retraining and more. Tens of billions are ticketed for the states to offset cuts they might otherwise have to make in aid to schools and local governments, and there is more than $48 billion for transportation projects such as road and bridge construction, mass transit and high-speed rail.
Democrats said the bill's tax cuts would help 95 percent of all Americans, much of the relief in the form of a break of $400 for individuals and $800 for couples. At the insistence of the White House, people who do not earn enough money to owe income taxes are eligible, an attempt to offset the payroll taxes they pay.
In a bow to political reality, lawmakers included $70 billion to shelter upper middle-class and wealthier taxpayers from an income tax increase that would otherwise hit them, a provision that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said would do relatively little to create jobs.
Also included were funds for two of Obama's initiatives, the expansion of computerized information technology in the health care industry and billions to create so-called green jobs the administration says will begin reducing the country's dependence on foreign oil.
Friday's events capped an early period of accomplishment for the Democrats, who won control of the White House and expanded their majorities in Congress in last fall's elections.
Since taking office on Jan. 20, the president has signed legislation extending government-financed health care to millions of lower-income children who lack it, a bill that President George W. Bush twice vetoed. He also has placed his signature on a measure making it easier for workers to sue their employers for alleged job discrimination, effectively overturning a ruling by the Supreme Court's conservative majority.
I would recommend listening to some of the audio on the economy and this stimulus bill. If you've been listening to Glenn Beck's coverage of this bill, he's been highlighting just what this stimulus bill will bring about and how it is bringing in things like nationalized health care and enormous spending without much evidence of the immediate stimulus it is supposedly being brought about for.
This is a sad time for our nation, and it falls in line with the economic collapse that could bring about a global currency prophesied in the Bible. This is not a physical currency so design and printing wouldn't be necessary. This is a mark without which you cannot buy or sell. The framework for implementing this has been in development, whether realized or not, in the introduction of credit cards and electronic payment. This laid the groundwork and infrastructure to have cashless payments and electronic transfers of money.
The next step that could bring about the realization of a mark being able to allow buying and selling is technology like RFID tattoo ink that is injected under the skin leaving a mark like a tattoo, but also has a unique identifier that when scanned can access funds, medical records and whatever else is entered into the global electronic database and accessed like information is today over the Internet in seconds.
Just a decade ago this would sound far-fetched, but except for the RFID tattoo, we use the technology daily. Some even use RFID embedded cards today for "contactless payments" at the store or movie theater, better known as PayPass. With the current financial structures around the world collapsing currently and the technology to implement a "way out" under a new global system - as well as current plans to digitize medical records recently announced by Obama - I think we are well on our way to the world crying out for a savior and a man stepping up with a plan and a "new way" to bring us into the New Age and the New World Order so many politicians around the world have been speaking of over the years.
Remember that we fight not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness, the mystery of iniquity that has been at work throughout history trying to deceive mankind and to bring about the end prophesied in the Bible.
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