In Final session: Infrastructure, auto industry; Current Congress to meet one more time under Bush administration, the Free press's political reporter Mark Fischenich talked to Congressman Walz and Senator Klobuchar about the waning days of Babylon the Bush administration:
The lame duck Congress has left Washington without much to quack about, but there’s likely to be another session the second week in December.
For two Minnesota Democrats who will be there in December — and in January after President-elect Barack Obama replaces George Bush — it’s hard not to look ahead to the next administration.
Walz on various bailouts:
U.S. Rep. Tim Walz of
Mankato said there’s a slim chance that a stimulus bill could be passed
in December that injects more than $26 billion into infrastructure
projects such as road construction. The House passed that bill in
September, but the closely divided Senate is unlikely to tackle the
bill unless Bush signals he’s interested in the idea. That sort of a bill, which would create a
substantial number of construction jobs, might have a more positive
impact on the economy than did the $700 billion rescue package for the
financial services industry passed earlier this fall, Walz said. “So I think there’s a chance,” he said,
predicting that supporters of the plan will try to persuade Bush
between now and Dec. 8 when Congress is expected to return. . . . . . . Walz was pleased the auto
plan didn’t pass. After voting twice against the $700 billion financial
bailout, Walz said more lawmakers now recognize that legislation was
seriously flawed, lacked accountability and has been largely
ineffective. “It appears more people are taking the
exact approach we took the first time, not to be rushed headlong into
something,” Walz said. The lesson from the financial services
legislation was that it’s better to take more time to ask questions,
make sure that taxpayer protections are included and insist that
extremely costly appropriations have a legitimate chance of working, he
said. One accomplishment of last week’s lame duck
session, said Walz and Klobuchar, is an extension of unemployment
benefits for workers who have reached the maximum — typically 26 weeks.
Workers in all states will receive an extra seven weeks of benefits,
and those in states with particularly high unemployment rates will
receive an additional 13 weeks beyond that.
Read the whole article at the MFP. It's hard for us not to think about the next administration this morning, since we're drinking some Farmers Choice Coffee we bought this weekend at the MFU convention. The brew is the Obama Blend, which is Kona and Kenya Estate AA, from the MFU's roaster, the Bean Factory. The roaster's press release describes it as "noble, not tart, but mellow and with great aroma . . .paying tribute to the roots of our new President elect, Barack Obama...." The running joke about the Farmers Choice Coffee hats is teasing about how the clever farmers in Minnesota figured out how to grow coffee trees in subzero weather.
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