John Boehner and 48 Hours

JOHN BOEHNER, GOP Leader: What happened to the promise that we're going to let the American people see what's in this bill for 48 hours?

From Human Events:

Democratic staffers released the final version of the stimulus bill at about 11 p.m. last night after delaying the release for hours to put it into a format which people cannot “search” on their home computers.

Instead of publishing the bill as a regular internet document -- which people can search by “key words” and otherwise, the Dems took hours to convert the final bill from the regular searchable format into “pdf” files, which can be read but not searched.

Three of the four .pdf files had no text embedded, just images of the text, which did not permit text searches of the bill. That move to conceal the bill’s provisions had not been remedied this morning at the time of publication of this article.

So, what are they hiding? A lot.

We searched the bill randomly -- the only way possible -- to see what’s being hidden from the public and the members of Congress who will be voting on the bill today. We found one provision that may be a good example of why the Democrats are desperate to stop any exposure of what is in this bill. Like this gem:

SEC. 1607. (a) CERTIFICATION BY GOVERNOR -- Not later than 45 days after the date of enactment of this Act, for funds provided to any State or agency thereof, the Governor of the State shall certify that: 1) the State request and use funds provided by this Act , and; 2) funds be used to create jobs and promote economic growth.

(b) ACCEPTANCE BY STATE LEGISLATURE -- If funds provided to any State in any division of this Act are not accepted for use by the Governor, then acceptance by the State legislature, by means of the adoption of a concurrent resolution, shall be sufficient to provide funding to such State.

This provision -- apparently aimed at conservative governors such as South Carolina’s Mark Sanford who does not want the federal money -- would overturn state laws and constitutions, intervening directly in the state’s government to give the legislature the power to overturn a government’s decision.

This provision probably violates the U.S. Constitution, a matter which will be of no concern to Congressional Democrats.

This act -- to strong-arm state governments and a governor’s ability to control the state budget -- is Chicago-style bipartisanship.

This bill is so bad that even the Associated Press analyst report today concludes that the bill will not jump-start the economy.

Are the Democrats proud of this awful bill and their disgraceful behavior, lying to the American people?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Handing the new administration a big win, House Democrats passed President Barack Obama's $787 billion plan to resuscitate the economy on Friday despite a wall of Republican opposition. The bill was approved 246-183 and sent to the Senate, where a vote was scheduled late Friday afternoon.

I don't see this as a big win for Obama.

True, the Dems rammed the bill through the House, but at what cost?

So many lies and so many broken promises. It's Obama and the Dems exposed. They failed their first test.

Congratulations to every House Republican for refusing to capitulate. Congratulations to the seven Democrats who voted against this disastrous bill.
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House Roll Call: House passes economic stimulus