The Grinch Who Stole Xmas? As holidays approach Republicans and some Democrats lead charge in denying unemployment extension for those out of work as 50 % of U.S. Congress now made up of millionaires
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Sky Valley Chronicle
11/20/2010
(NATIONAL) -- It may not be a great holiday season for some 5 million out of work Americans - and their spouses and children - who's unemployment benefits are about to run out.
It has not gone unnoticed by the talking TV heads and those in the ranks of the unemployed that many of the same Republicans in the House, and a scattering of Democrats, who are willing to borrow $700 Billion the country does not have - to guarantee tax cuts for those making $250,000 a year and more including millionaires and billionaires - are leading the charge to deny just a 3 month extension in unemployment benefits, at a cost of $12.5 Billion, to help get America's unemployed through the holidays.
Reasoning? The country cannot afford it.
In just 12 days unemployment pay runs out for many Americans – and their family members who depend on that money to stay alive - who have been out of work for more than six months.
In the first week of December, some 800,000 Americans alone would see their benefits dry up. In the rest of the month another 1.2 million out of work Americans would see their checks go by-by and another 3 million would see their unemployment checks stop in January and February.
The House of Representatives voted Thursday afternoon against extending federal unemployment benefits another 90 days, leaving the jobless benefits of millions of Americans in jeopardy as the current unemployment relief is set to expire just after Thanksgiving.
The legislation would have extended the deadline to file for federal unemployment benefits from Dec. 1 until Feb. 28.
It was brought to the floor under the 'rules of suspension', requiring a two-thirds majority to pass. It fell 17 votes short with a final tally of 258 voting for the extension, including 21 Republicans, and 154 voting against it including 11 Democrats who voted no on the measure. Twenty-two members of the House, including 7 Democrats, didn't vote at all.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi blamed Republicans in the House for blocking the extension and pledged to continue working towards a short-term extension before the current benefits expire Nov. 30.
The current benefits are set to expire Nov. 30. The house will have two legislative days left to try to prevent the benefits from expiring when Congress returns to finish the Lame Duck session after Thanksgiving.
But even if the House were to pass a bill to extend the jobless benefits, the Senate would also have to take action before Nov. 30 to keep the relief from lapsing.
The last unemployment extension was passed in July, extending benefits for six months. Congress has already extended the deadline four times in the past year.
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MANY IN CONGRESS WHO VOTED AGAINST EXTENDING UNEMPLOYMENT PAY
SAW THEIR OWN WEALTH INCREASE THE PAST TWO YEARS
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Ironically while many unemployed Americans saw their savings and 401K retirement plans vanish during the recession – and some became homeless for the first time in their lives - some of those in Congress who now vote to deny unemployment extensions for just 90 days saw their net worth increase -- dramatically in some instances.
According to a new study by the Center For Responsive Politics, while many Americans saw their own economic lives shattered in the Great Recession, the number of millionaires in Congress increased to 49%.
In other words, one half of all congress members are millionaires - 261 out of 535 members of congress - and others are close to that level of wealth.
It is a figure that is not remotely representative of, or connected to, the lives of most American families.
According to a report by NBC news, that "50% of congress as millionaires" figure compares to just 1% of all Americans who are millionaires.
And as millions of Americans struggled with lost jobs, lost incomes and in some cases lost homes during the recession, from 2008 to 2009 the collective wealth of all members of congress grew an average of 16%, according to the report.
An impressive nine of the 14 wealthiest counties in America are in the Washington D.C. general metropolitan area, according to a report in Forbes magazine.
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MANY WHO NOW FIGHT AGAINST UNEMPLOYMENT EXTENSIONS HAD NO PROBLEM SHIPPING BILLIONS OF AMERICAN TAX DOLLARS TO IRAQ THAT VANISHED
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Ironically perhaps, many of the same Washington players this week that fought to deny unemployment pay for Americans did not show the same concern for fiscal responsibility with shipping billions of American tax dollars in cash to help Iraqis who needed help. Billions that simply vanished.
These billions of dollars came from the taxes paid by the same Americans now out of work and hoping for an unemployment pay extension.
Many of the millionaires and other wealthy members of congress who voted this week against extending unemployment pay supported the invasion of Iraq.
In April 2003, one month after the invasion of Iraq, and continuing for little more than a year, the United States Federal Reserve shipped $12 Billion dollars in US taxpayers dollars to Iraq – about the same amount it would take to extend unemployment pay for three months to Americans.
The US military delivered the bank notes into the hands of an entirely new set of players — the "Coalition Provisional Authority" (CPA) to be dispensed for "Iraqi reconstruction."
It was reported in 2009 that at least $9 Billion dollars of that cash was unaccounted for due to a complete lack of oversight.
It is not clear if any of the same lawmakers who now seek to deny Americans unemployment pay extension have pushed as hard for public hearings to find out what happened to their missing $9 Billion dollars in cash.
For a detailed look at taxpayer dollars at work in Iraq see "Windfalls of War: U.S. Contractors in Afghanistan & Iraq" by the Center For Public Integrity located HERE
The CPA had been hastily slapped together by the Pentagon to serve as the interim government in Iraq.
On May 9, 2003, President Bush appointed L. Paul Bremer III as CPA administrator. Over the next year, a compliant – some say subservient – U.S. Congress gave $1.6 Billion dollars to Bremer to administer the CPA -- this was over and above the $12 billion in cash that the CPA had been given to disburse from Iraqi oil revenues and unfrozen Iraqi assets.
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LAWMAKERS DID NOT HAVE A CLUE?
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Yet according to some reports, few lawmakers in Congress had any clue about the true nature of the CPA as an institution. Their collective "fiscal responsibility" bells had not, evidently, gone off when the money was flying out of the country like a bat out of hell.
Lawmakers had never discussed the establishment of the CPA, much less authorized it — a fact many Americans now consider odd if not almost criminal given that the CPA would be receiving taxpayer dollars.
Dollars from the pockets of the same Americans that many lawmakers now say should not have an unemployment pay extension because the country cannot afford it.
It was reported that many "confused members of Congress believed that the CPA was a US government agency, which it was not, or that at the very least it had been authorized by the United Nations, which it had not."
In fact the CPA was, in effect, established by edict outside the traditional framework of American government.
And because it was a "rogue operation", as one report called it, no one was responsible for what happened to that money.
The CPA was accountable to no one -- its finances were "off the books" for US government purposes.
As a result, the CPA provided as one writer called it, "an unprecedented opportunity for fraud, waste, and corruption involving American government officials, American contractors, renegade Iraqis, and many others."
This "opportunity for corruption" was ironically financed by the tax dollars of millions of Americans now out of work and hoping for an unemployment pay extension.
It could be a safe bet that few, if any of these currently out of work Americans had any clue then or now that in its short life more than $23 Billion dollars of their money would pass through the CPA's hands -- and that figure does not include potentially billions of dollars more in oil shipments the CPA neglected to meter.
Incidents of flagrant abuse of those taxpayer dollars are legendary. For example, of 8,206 "guards" drawing CPA paychecks, only 602 actually existed; the other 7,604 were "ghost" employees.
Halliburton, former Vice President Dick Cheney's employer and an agency that saw its fortunes rise dramatically during the Bush years with hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for the use of its mercenary ("pay for play") soldiers and other services in Iraq, charged the CPA for 42,000 meals for soldiers while in fact serving only 14,000.
Government contractors were known, according to another report, to "play football with bricks of $100,000 shrink-wrapped $100 bills."
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NO END TO THE AMOUNT OF CRAZY ANTICS TAXPAYERS FUNDED THROUGH THE CPA
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Americans who are now unemployed will probably take little comfort in knowing that some of the same government lawmakers who have a problem with extending their unemployment pay for 90 days, had no problem evidently with some of the craziest abuses of their tax dollars ever recorded in modern times.
One was a CPA contract awarded during the Bush years to a company called NorthStar for services of "accounting and auditing."
The strange part of this accounting service was that there was no certified public accountant on staff.
A businessman named Thomas Howell ran NorthStar out of his home in La Jolla, California, along with three other unrelated businesses, including "home remodeling and furnishing."
The company did own a post office box in the Bahamas as its legal address of record.
NorthStar was incorporated in the Bahamas as an "international business company" (IBC).
Yet despite the impressive sounding name, many IBCs have been found to be little more than "paper" operations.
Some researchers found that, as a general rule, they don't perform any business; they are empty vessels that can be used for anything.
They have no chief executive officer or board of directors, and they don't publish financial statements. And an IBC's books, if there are any, can be kept anywhere in the world, but no one can inspect them.
IBCs aren't required to file annual reports or disclose the identity of their owners. They are shells that, in effect, operate in virtual secrecy.
The Pentagon put the NorthStar IBC in charge of monitoring billions of dollars of Iraqi and US citizens' tax money and of making sure it was spent honestly.
As many of America's millionaire lawmakers now fight against a 90-day unemployment extension for those out of work Americans that would cost $12.5 Billion, the latest tally of the cost of the Iraq war – money that came from the pockets of these out of work Americans – was $742,867,981,065 as of 5:30 pm Nov. 19, 2010 according to the National Priorities Project at costofwar.com.
Almost every penny of that was charged to the national credit card for Americans now and in the future to somehow pay down.
On the same date and time, the cost of the war in Afghanistan funded by the same American tax-dollars-on-a-credit-card was $366,881,823,901.
And the cost that American taxpayers have funded in all U.S. wars since 2001?
A jaw dropping $1,109,657,504,060.31.
And climbing every second.
