Friday, October 16, 2009

Dispatch Slams Tiberi in Editorial, but Somehow Confuses Him with Obama !?!?

Yesterday, Blue Bexley's favorite Washington correspondent Jonathan Riskind posted the following on the Columbus Dipatch's political blog The Daily Briefing:



Rep. Pat Tiberi says the furor over no Social Security benefit increases should lead people to consider a proposal he and two other Republicans made earlier this month.

The Genoa Township Republican, a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, co-authored a bill proposing that unobligated stimulus dollars be used to provide Social Security recipients and veterans with a $250 check in 2010.

...

President Obama and some Democrats have endorsed a second $250 payment, but reportedly are focusing on a proposal by Sen. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Or., that would fund the payments with a new Social Security payroll tax on people with incomes between $250,000 and $395,000.

...

Tiberi's office acknowledges that it is waiting for his proposal to be "scored" by the Congressional Budget Office to show whether there would be enough unused stimulus money left next year to fund the $250 payments next year.

Unless that can be shown, Tiberi's proposal likely wouldn't be considered deficit-neutral and thus wouldn't have much chance of going any further.



Today's editorial in the Dispatch:

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama urged Congress to pass a bill granting Social Security recipients bonus checks for $250. This giveaway proposal, estimated to cost $13 billion to $14 billion in money that the federal government doesn't have, perfectly illustrates why government policy and fiscal common sense are so rarely seen together in public.

...

And so, even though seniors do not have to deal with a higher cost of living, their voting power and sense of entitlement override common sense and lead politicians to propose spending money the nation doesn't have for a benefit that shouldn't be paid because it isn't needed.



The editorial does not mention Pat Tiberi.