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email newsletter | tell a friend | wiki | about | home | log in On the WashingtonWatch.com Blog During Congress’ recent post-election meeting, several bills were introduced to manage the financial services bailout. But the bailout legislation already passed, and bills introduced now won’t do anything. It’s discussed in a WashingtonWatch.com blog post called Ready, Vote, DEBATE! Featured Item Congress was out last week for the Thanksgiving holiday and will not return until the week of December 8th. A likely subject when it does come back is support for the ailing auto industry. Among many bills being considered is H.R. 7297, the Emergency Automobile Industry American Jobs Protection Act of 2008. The bill would allow bailout funds to go to the “Big Three” automakers only if they would not relocate jobs to foreign countries, and if auto dealerships and suppliers would also benefit. H.R. 7297 is only one of many bills, and the ideas in it may or may not go into any final proposal. H.R. 7297 The Emergency Automobile Industry American Jobs Protection Act of 2008 What People Think The Emergency Automobile Industry American Jobs Protection Act of 2008 50% For, 50% Against Vote on this Bill Displayed below are new, updated, and passed items with their cost or savings per family. New Items none Updated Items none Passed Items none email newsletter | tell a friend | wiki | about | home | privacy | contact | log in WashingtonWatch.com P.O. Box 77576 Washington, D.C. 20013

Dozens of press releases come out every day on some public policy issue or another. I picked one pretty much at random to write about a couple of months ago. It was an American Trucking Associations release touting the support of a professional truck driver for a piece of legislation. I thought that was a little gimmicky, but it’s far from the worst thing I’ve ever seen in public policy advocacy.

So up went a picture of Tony Sifford and a post about his support for some energy bill or other. (Gosh - remember when energy was the biggest issue going, and not government bailouts and the reeling economy? Those were the days - two months ago.)

Tragically, Tony was killed in an accident a month later.

I’ve been honored to see commenters on my post about his passing offering their condolences to his family and illustrating how Tony Sifford touched their lives. It’s a nice illustration of the value of every life and how we all rely on each other. Even a “random” truck driver from Hillsville, Virginia is a part of our community and someone who we’ll miss when he’s gone.

This would be a nice lesson for the people debating H.R. 6798 to remember. It’s a bill dealing with whether certain cancer diagnoses should be attributed to Agent Orange, and the people debating it right now are being needlessly cruel to one another.

Take a moment out, people, to remember your common bond with one another and the importance we have to one another - in ways you might not realize until it’s too late.

This Week with George Stephanopolous did a great little set-up piece this morning on the budget situation the two presidential candidates would face if elected.

In each of the debates, Senators McCain and Obama were asked what they would prioritize or cut given the large existing deficit and the weakening economy. Both largely refused to talk about scaling back their spending plans.

The ABC News piece says that Senator John McCain’s economic plan would “cost” $5.0 trillion dollars and Senator Obama’s $3.5 trillion over 10 years.

It’s difficult to find their source (happy to get more info in the comments, folks), but I suspect it’s this report from the Tax Policy Center. “Cost” is a little ambiguous: What it says is that their plans would increase the national debt by these amounts - about $40,000 (McCain) or $29,000 (Obama) per U.S. family.

Increases in debt are caused by either more spending or less revenue (that is, taxes). The report says “Obama would raise revenues by about $800 billion over the decade, while McCain would lose $600 billion.” That means higher taxes to the tune of about $6,400 per U.S. family under Obama’s plans over a ten-year period. McCain’s tax cuts would be a total of about $4,750 per U.S. family over ten years.

So, in summary, both candidates would increase the debt by increasing spending. Obama would increase the debt less because of higher taxes. McCain would increase the debt more by cutting taxes while increasing spending.

Which of these two choices do you prefer? (Maybe neither?)

The This Week piece also says the head of the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated the 2009 deficit at $750 billion. A group called the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says it’s more like $1 trillion. That’s between $7,700 and $10,250 per family in overspending just this year, even before either of the presidential candidates really gets to start in with their promised spending.

Both candidates are whispering sweet nothings about all the spending they’ll do, but that’s a bit of a siren song considering how much debt we’re swimming in.

On Saturday, I wrote here about how the National Debt Clock in New York City had run out of space. Things have taken a turn for the worse.

The U.S. Treasury’s version of the national debt clock is broken!

A visitor to this site emailed me today to point out that TreasuryDirect’s “Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It” feature is stopped. Stopped on Friday, October 10th.

Query what the national debt was on Monday, and it tells you about Friday, October 10th. Query what the national debt was on Tuesday, and it tells you about Friday, October 10th. Query any day after Friday, October 10th and it tells you about Friday, October 10th.

This may be great news: the national debt has stopped growing!

This may be dreadful news: The national debt is so high that computers can no longer compute it.

This may be sinister news: the U.S. Treasury is trying to conceal the debt numbers from the public!

Most likely, this is not really news: something is wrong with the Web site that displays this national debt clock.

But since we’ve had huge spending bills in Congress the last few weeks, this is no time for debt clocks to go out of whack. The public needs to see what’s going on from every direction, and the total national debt is a very important one.

By the way, just so you know, the national debt today is three or four days higher than:

$10,294,381,432,306.11

That’s $33,706.56 per man, woman, and child in the United States. $105,507.30 per average family.