Obama signs emergency bill to halt teacher layoffs

yahoo ^

[traumer]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Summoned back from summer break, the House on Tuesday pushed through an emergency $26 billion jobs bill that Democrats said would save 300,000 teachers, police and others from election-year layoffs. President Barack Obama immediately signed it into law.

Lawmakers streamed back to Washington for a one-day session as Democrats declared a need to act before children return to classrooms minus teachers laid off because of budgetary crises in states that have been hard-hit by the recession.

Republicans saw it differently, calling the bill a giveaway to teachers' unions and an example of wasteful Washington spending that voters will punish the Democrats for in this fall's elections. The legislation was approved mainly along party lines by a vote of 247-161.

The aid for the states is to be paid for mostly by closing a tax loophole used by multinational corporations and by reducing food stamp benefits for the poor.

Obama, joined by teachers at a Rose Garden ceremony earlier in the day, said, "We can't stand by and do nothing while pink slips are given to the men and women who educate our children or keep our communities safe."

The Senate narrowly passed the measure last Thursday, after the House had begun its August break.

The legislation provides $10 billion to school districts to rehire laid-off teachers or to ensure that more teachers won't be let go before the new school year begins. The Education Department estimates that could save 160,000 jobs.

[FlingWingFlyer]

The union thugs got their payoff from their boy.

[Cheerio]

Is this the bill that was in such a rush that it had no title or number???? I think CNS reported that.

[Cheerio]

Is this the bill that was in such a rush that it had no title or number???? I think CNS reported that.

[Monorprise]

If the State wants to raise taxes to “save theses jobs” let the state raise taxes to “save theses jobs” there ain’t no need for Washington to get involved unless your planing on transferring wealth from the prudent states like Texas to the improvidence and wasteful states like New York.

I would say that the Federal government should be banned constitutionally from spending our money on things like this except that they are banned constitutionally from redistributing our money like this.

Congress as usual just ignores their Constitutional limitations so there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do to keep them from robing us blind. Not so long as they control the enforcement of the Constitution(thou their own appointed court)

[kearnyirish2]

Will they continue providing the funding in perpetuity, or we will get screwed with the bill next year, when the teachers we voted to lay off this year in our school budget votes are returned to the taxpayers’ teat? This is a direct overturning of those votes (especially in NJ, where most teachers are paid through local property taxes, at exhorbitant rates).

[REPANDPROUDOFIT]

Again, politicians use scare tactics to convince people that their lifestyle will be significantly reduced if city or state budgets have to be cut. When dwindling revenue calls for job cuts, they always start with the workers who directly impact the standard of living - teachers, cops, firemen, sanitation workers, etc., etc., etc. They threaten to cut services, but, again, it is always the very services that directly affect the citizenry - libraries, museums, parks, sewer and water, etc., etc., etc.

Yesterday, I saw this press release from the city of Los Angeles - http://projects.latimes.com/la-city-salaries/

Check it out. You can't tell me there isn't a clerk typist or a public relations employee that could go before you fire the firemen or close the parks!

[REPANDPROUDOFIT]

See my post 86

There should be a name for this strategy. Please help me think of one.

"PANIC REDUCTION SYNDROME" ???

When the pols threaten the cuts to vital services, the people need to fight back and demand that cuts start in non-vital areas.

[pnh102]

This bill also forces one state - Texas - to maintain or raise their educational spending or risk losing $830MIL in federal education moneys!

What Texas, and all other states which gripe about federal meddling in their affairs, need to do, is to tell the Federal government to take this money and shove it. For one thing, education is supposed to be a state and local issue anyway, the federal government should be playing no role in keeping the lights on in the classroom whatsoever.

[MNJohnnie]

Can no one in DC do math? 26,000,000,000/ by 300,000 equals $86,666 per job!

So what happens when the money runs out Democrats?

Just like the Obama Stimulus was a lie from the start, so is this scam. They are using failed economic theory to manufacture PR cover story for the largest taxpayer funded bribe in history.

All the Obama Democrats are doing with their “stimulus” bills is charging the various blue state’s Visa bill to the Fed taxpayers Master Card.

Like this bill, the bulk of the Fed “Stimulus” spending went to bail out local and state Governments. The Dems theory is the economy will recover and local tax revenues will come back up before this new “Stimulus” spending is exhausted thus preventing any mass layoffs in their Government Employee Union political base.

Now they are running out of Stimulus money, the economy isn’t recovering and the state and local budgets still have all most all the fat in them they had pre Recession so of course their solution is “do the same thing again”.

[Marty62]

End the EDU!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[battletank]

OH YES! THAT ticket give me leg tingles!

[poobear]

No lay-offs scheduled here in Seminole County. Is all this money just going Blue bankrupted states?

[Grampa Dave]

Sorry no money for food stamps for poor Black/White Americans. Lord 0HaHa only has money for unions and illegals.