All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

President Obama announced Monday that his administration is ramping up the pace at which funds from the $787 billion economic stimulus package are spent and predicted that the legislation will save or create 600,000 jobs in the next 100 days.

The bill will mean "keeping teachers in the classroom, cops on the streets, providing summer jobs for youth that are particularly hard-hit in this job market, breaking ground on hundreds of new projects, all across the country, in clean energy and transportation and so on," he said.

The president said last month that the bill had saved or created 150,000 jobs in its first 100 days, a claim met with criticism from Republicans. Citing a May New York Times report that less than 6 percent of the money had been paid out – most of it in the form of social service payments to states – the Republican National Committee argued that the Recovery Act had thus far "produced waste and fraud, but no jobs."

The president insisted Monday, however, that the administration has "done more than ever, faster than ever, more responsibility than ever, to get the gears of the economy moving again."

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The economic stimulus package – also known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – turns 100 days old today, and the Obama administration is marking the occasion in two ways.

The first is a speech by the president at 2:40 ET in Nevada "on the important early investments included in the Recovery Act." And the second is a just-released report on the results of the $787 billion piece of legislation, from Vice President Joe Biden.

In the report, the administration argues that the stimulus package has already created or saved 150,000 jobs – though it should be noted that jobs "created or saved" is a notoriously difficult figure to measure. It also says that $112 billion in money from the package has been "obligated" to programs and projects so far.

The Republican National Committee, unsurprisingly, is not impressed by these figures: It sent a "research briefing" to reporters arguing that "after 100 days, the stimulus has produced waste and fraud, but no jobs."

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Both liberals and conservatives took to the airwaves today with a series of new advertisements about government spending.

Liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org released a TV ad about health insurance in Iowa, Montana and Washington D.C., where the hottest battles over health are expected to be fought. The 30-second spot features two undertakers fretting that public health care will drive them out of business.

“A public health care plan means affordable health care for everyone. And you know what that means,” says one undertaker, fretfully.

“More healthy people living longer,” responds his unhappy coworker. That prompts the first man to say, in reference to President Obama, “this guy’s killing us.”



“Senators [Max] Baucus (D-MT) and [Chuck] Grassley (R-IA) are at the center of the fight for real health care reform," said Justin Ruben, Executive Director of MoveOn, in a statement. "They have a responsibility to stand with the overwhelming majority of Americans who want the choice of a public health insurance plan – but instead, Senator Grassley and Congressional Republicans have been standing with the insurance companies and special interests.”

Not to be outdone, the National Republican Congressional Committee is running five radio ads targeting the fiscally conservative "blue dog" Democrats for supporting the $787 billion stimulus bill. The ad, run in the districts of Marion Berry (AR-01), Charlie Melancon (LA-03), Earl Pomeroy (ND-AL), Zack Space (OH-18) and John Tanner (TN-08), charges the legislators with being House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's "lap dogs."

Click here to listen to one of the NRCC ads.

It was a day of outrage on Capitol Hill. Outrage that AIG, recipient of almost $180 billion in federal bailout money, is paying out $165 million in "retention awards" to hundreds of employees, including 73 bonuses of $1 million or more and 11 payments to people who no longer work for AIG.

As CBS News and others have documented that outrage is disingenuous coming from lawmakers who have known about the pending bonuses for months.

In particular, it's disingenuous coming from anyone who voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (a.k.a. the Obama stimulus package). The stimulus bill included provisions to limit executive compensation at companies receiving federal bailout money. But it also stated explicitly that the limits would not apply to bonuses agreed to prior to Feb. 11, 2009.

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Though President-elect Obama is taking some time off to spend with family and work on his golf game in Hawaii, CBS News correspondent Chip Reid reports that the president-elect's advisers are working overtime on a massive government spending plan that is getting bigger by the day.

Sources on Capitol Hill told Reid that the stimulus package could grow to at least $850 billion, which is about double the cost, in today's dollars, of the interstate highway system and more than the United States has spent on the Iraq war.

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"I don't think there is any chance of a second stimulus package at the end of this administration in the days that we have remaining," White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto told reporters this morning, reports CBS News' Mark Knoller. Fratto acknowledged the need for an economic push but said responsibility lies with the incoming Obama administration.

"Our concern with the article yesterday was that it had a narrow focus and that was to simply blame the housing crisis and the resulting financial crisis on this administration's push for home ownership," Fratto also said of the New York Times' story Sunday which linked Bush policies to the housing crisis. He added "that is about as myopic as you can get and as unsophisticated as you can get."

The White House did not parse words in a reaction to the story released yesterday by press secretary Dana Perino, which read, "today's front-page New York Times story relies on hindsight with blinders on and one eye closed. The Times' 'reporting' in this story amounted to finding selected quotes to support a story the reporters fully intended to write from the onset, while disregarding anything that didn't fit their point of view."

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