David Obey and the Stimulus

There he goes again.

David Obey has added to his lengthy list of embarrassments.

Actually, this latest Obey disgrace really looks bad.

Charlie Sykes points out Obey's Pork, as cited in the Washington Times:

A top House Republican is demanding an investigation into whether the more than $2 billion for national parks in the House stimulus package is proper in light of the fact that the chief lobbyist for the National Parks Conservation Association is the son of House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey.

NPCA is a major player in advocating for national parks funding, and its senior vice president for government affairs is Craig Obey, son of the Wisconsin Democrat who has long been his party's top Appropriations Committee member.

The money included in the stimulus bill that passed Mr. Obey's committee - $2.25 billion - was about equal to the National Park Service's total yearly budget, and would be a staggering increase and almost three times the $802 million that the Senate Appropriations Committee approved for park spending in its stimulus bill.

On Wednesday evening, the House passed the $819 billion stimulus bill by a 244-188 vote, though every Republican in the chamber and 11 Democrats voted against it.

Republicans said a bill of this size presented too many opportunities for mischief, pointing to the parks funding as one such case. Just before the vote, Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the top Republican on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, called for an investigation into the parks money.

"It really does beg the question of, is this an earmark, is this a family connection and should it have been disclosed at least in the spirit of what the Democrats said they wanted, and the answer is it should have been disclosed," Mr. Issa said.

Obama promised transparency and accountability and blah, blah, blah.

I guess Obey didn't get the memo.

Bret Baier also questions Obey's family connection.

Obey's rancid pork is bringing a lot of unwelcome attention to Wisconsin.

This massive so-called stimulus bill is a mess.

Will that keep Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl from supporting the Democrat Wish List?

Of course not.
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Earlier this week, the New York Times wrote a piece on David Obey's contribution to the gigantic so-called stimulus bill.

When House Republicans look at the $825 billion economic package headed toward a vote this week, they do not see President Obama. To them, the bill personifies Representative David R. Obey, the prickly Wisconsin Democrat who is chairman of the Appropriations Committee and has spent 40 years in Congress as a champion of federal spending.

Included in the package is $30 billion to subsidize health insurance for those who lose their jobs, $20 billion to accelerate new health care information technology, $1 billion to renovate community health centers, $600 million to train health care workers, $15 billion to increase college Pell Grants and $4 billion to help communities buy and improve distressed properties.

Indeed, it was Mr. Obey, the third-most-senior member of the House, who, in large measure, shaped the bill, in concert with other House Democratic leaders. And though Mr. Obama has embraced the bill, not a single House Republican has lent it support. The president himself is scheduled to visit Capitol Hill on Tuesday to try to address Republican concerns that Mr. Obey and others are using the legislation to push vast amounts of money into health care and other favored initiatives.

“It is pretty obvious we are funding the chairman’s priorities,” said Representative Jerry Lewis of California, the senior Republican on the appropriations panel. Mr. Lewis described Mr. Obey as driven by a “pent-up desire to spend money in existing programs.”

But the plan is expected to pass with or without Republican support, and Mr. Obey makes no apologies for its contents. An essential part of responding to any economic crisis, he said, is looking out for those on the receiving end of the turmoil.

“You have to take into account the fact that there are certain people in this society getting crushed by this economy,” said Mr. Obey, whose work on the package left him worn down and struggling to regain his voice. “They lose their jobs, they lose their health insurance, they lose their ability to keep their kids in college.

“If you didn’t have two million additional people out of work, you wouldn’t have to be looking for ways to help them. What the hell do you do if the economy goes to hell and two or three or four million more people are out of work?”

Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the senior Republican on the Budget Committee, sees it differently. “This is 1936 economics,” Mr. Ryan said. “But it reflects David’s ideology and his economic doctrine. They took everything in their file cabinet that has been piling up for 100 years, threw it in this bill and called it economic stimulus.”

Mr. Obey, 70, the product of a Catholic blue-collar upbringing in Wausau, said that if he had sole ownership, he would have turned out a costlier measure with more health spending. He said his role was to fashion a package that could balance the competing interests and ideas of a range of lawmakers, the new administration and outside groups, and roll it into a bill that could pass — and lift the economy.

“This is my honest effort,” he said, “to find a point of equilibrium where a majority of people in the place can feel comfortable with what we have done, and then you hope it works.”

Obey's "honest effort"? "Honest"?

That's very questionable.

One thing to remember: This legislation is all Democrat.

The Republicans in the Senate need to send the same strong message to Obama and the Democrats that the House Republicans did. They should vote against this enormous spending bill.