I'm really mystified why President Obama keeps talking about the struggling RV industry in Elkhart, Indiana.

Aren't these the kind of vehicles he was saying Americans shouldn't be driving on the campaign trail? Didn't he come right out and say "We can't drive our SUV's."

Yes, he did. Verbatim:

We can't drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we're living in the desert or we're living in the tundra and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world's energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we'll be fine. Don't worry about us. That's not leadership.

Obama says they're not selling because they're isn't enough consumer credit, but their sales starting dropping pretty severely last fall. That's when gas prices were peaking and the GOP was cheering "Drill here, drill now!" to bring them down.

Obama, on the other hand, was saying we need to wean ourselves off of the RV's driving juice.

I think it's a lot more likely RV's quit selling because they, like lots of other "gas -guzzling" vehicles were being demonized and were becoming expensive to drive. And, I don't think Obama's favored cap-and-trade program would do much to increase sales, either.

President Barack Obama warned Americans the economy could lose $2 trillion consumer demand in coming years if his economic stimulus bill is not passed

"This is not your ordinary run of the mill recession," Obama said. "We undergoing the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression."

He said the economy could "lose $1 trillion in demand and another trillion next year," if massive amounts of tax dollars are not spent on government projects.

Obama said he would continue to make overtures to Republicans in the days ahead but admitted he was frustrated with their opposition. "When I hear from folks who presided over a doubling of national debt, I would like them not to engage in revisionist history."

The Congressional Budget Office has scored the Collins-Nelson version of the stimulus bill at $838.2 billion.

This is $18.7 billion more than legislation passed by the House Democrats.

Sen. Jim DeMint's office has made the CBO information available HERE. DeMint blogged today that the Senate bill would increase funding for 130 more programs than the House bill did.

Earlier this week Sen. Susan Collins (R.-Maine), who was one of the chief negotiators of the bill, said she would not support legislation that was any bigger than the House bill.

"We don't want a package that is too small because that will end up just wasting money. On the other hand, we're very leery of having an enormous package that would not be necessary and would just boost the federal deficit," Collins told CNN.

Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, insulted Blue Dog Rep. Heath Schuler's record as an NFL quarterback while responding to Shuler's concerns about the lack of bipartisanship on the Hill.

"Let me get this straight - this is coming from a guy who threw more than twice as many interceptions than touchdowns?," Manley told The Politico's Glenn Thrush. Manley proceeded to talk about why Reid believed the stimulus bill was good.

Schuler was one of the 11 Democrats who voted against the House version of the stimulus billl.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is also drawing attention to questionable spending items in the stimulus bill, among them $3 million in tax breaks for vehicles that cannot drive any faster than 25 mph and more than a 1 billion to makeover government buildings.

Here's a link to the latest release from the leader's office. I'm copying the info below:

•    $300 Million for Federal Employee Company Cars And Neighborhood Electric Vehicles: (Pg. 96 of the Collins-Nelson Amendment, “For capital expenditures and necessary expenses of acquiring motor vehicles with higher fuel economy, including: hybrid vehicles; neighborhood electric vehicles; electric vehicles; and commercially-available, plug-in hybrid vehicles, $300,000,000”)  

•    $3 Million Tax Benefit For Golf Carts, Electric Motorcycles and ATVs (That Don’t Exceed 25mph): (Pg.474 of the Collins-Nelson Amendment, “Credit for certain other vehicles… meets the requirements of section 571.500 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations;” And “Estimated Effects of the Cantwell Amendment,” Joint Committee on Taxation, 2/06/09)

•    $125 Million for DC Sewers: (Pg. 94 of the Collins-Nelson Amendment, “$125,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2010, to continue implementation of the Combined Sewer Overflow Long-Term Control Plan”)

•    $1.652 Billion for Government Facilities And Renovations: (Pg.3 of the Collins-Nelson Amendment, Government facilities upgrades for the Department of Agriculture, $200M; Pg.41 of the Collins-Nelson Amendment, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, $377M; Pg.124 of the Collins-Nelson Amendment,  the Smithsonian Institution, $75M; Pg.130 of the Collins-Nelson Amendment, the Health Resources and Services Administration, $88M; Pg.130 of the Collins-Nelson Amendment, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, $412M; Pg.133 of the Collins-Nelson Amendment, the National Institutes of Health, $500M)

“If a city needs tree planting and that brings real jobs and it puts people and their trucks and their trees and their nurserymen to work, and if it provides shade, and it provides greenness, and if it absorbs carbon, and if it engages in traffic calming, there are all sorts of good reasons why people would want to do that."
-Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island on the Senate floor, opposing an amendment sponsored by Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma to prohibit stimulus money from being used to fund zoos aquariums or beautification projects.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R.-Okla.) has released a partial list of spending items he finds objectionable in the 778-page Nelson-Collins version of the Senate stimulus bill. See below:

$39 billion slush fund for "state fiscal stabilization" bailout
$5.5 billion for making federal buildings "green" (including $448 million for DHS HQ) $275 million for flood prevention
$65 million for watershed rehabilitation
$200 million for public computer centers at community colleges and libraries
$650 million for the DTV transition coupon program
$307 million for constructing NIST office buildings
$1 billion for administrative costs and construction of NOAA office buildings
$100 million for constructing U.S. Marshalls office buildings
$300 million for constructing FBI office buildings
$800 million for constructing Federal Prison System buildings and facilities
$10 million to fight Mexican gunrunners
$1.3 billion for NASA (including $450 million for "science" at NASA)
$100 million to clean up sites used in early U.S. atomic energy program
$10 million for urban canals
$2 billion for manufacturing advanced batteries for hybrid cars
$1.5 billion for carbon capture projects under sec. 703 of P.L. 110-140 (though section only authorizes $1 billion for five years)
$300 million for hybrid and electric cars for federal employees
$198 million to design and furnish the DHS headquarters
$255 million for "priority procurements" at Coast Guard (polar ice breaker)
$500 million for State and local fire stations
$180 million for construction of Bureau of Land Management facilities
$500 million for wildland fire management
$110 million for construction for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
$522 million for construction for the Bureau of Indian Affairs
$650 million for abandoned mine sites
$75 million for the Smithsonian Institution
$1.2 billion for summer jobs for youth
$412 million for CDC headquarters
$500 million earmark for NIH facilities in Bethesda, MD
$160 million for "volunteers" at the Corp. for National and Community Service
$750 earmark for the National Computer Center in MD
$224 million for International Boundary and Water Commission – U.S. and Mexico
$850 million for Amtrak
$100 million for lead paint hazard reduction

 

$300 million has been allocated in the stimulus bill for modern golf carts and other forms of environmentally friendly modes of transportation.

The Democrats thought they could fool you by renaming the money earmarked for golf carts in the stimulus bill as paying for  "neighborhood electric vehicles” and “low speed motor vehicles."

Industry people call 'em NEV's for short. Most people call them golf carts.

$300 million is being allocated by the Senate to buy "NEV's" and other forms of environmentally friendly transportation like hybrid cars.

It's right on page 96 of the massive 778-page bill. Go ahead and look it up. Here is what it says:

ENERGY-EFFICIENT FEDERAL MOTOR VEHICLE FLEET PROCUREMENT: For capital expenditures and necessary expenses of acquiring motor vehicles with higher fuel economy, including: hybrid vehicles; neighborhood electric vehicles; electric vehicles; and commercially-available, plug-in hybrid vehicles, $300,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2011.

Sen. Ben Nelson has released an Excel document detailing the bipartisan Nelson-Collins modifications to the stimulus bill.

Here's the funding breakdown, by agency, produced by the bipartisan working group below. This is a good indication of where the bill's priorities are. You can see Labor, HHS, Education is getting, by far, the greatest amount of funding.

All of these amounts are in the thousands:


Update: Senate Conservatives put out a prettier version of the Excel sheet HERE in the form of a PDF.

The line for appropriations spending is on page 7 of the PDF.

President Obama doesn't want the staggering price tag on the stimulus bill that's been stuffed with pork-barrel projects to stop Congress from passing it quickly.

"Legislation of such magnitude deserves the scrutiny that it's received over the last month, and it will receive more in the days to come," Obama said in his weeklyaddress. "But we can't afford to make perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary. The scale and scope of this plan is right. And the time for action is now."

He reminded the GOP, for the second time in a week, he has a healthy amount of political capital to use.

"That was, after all, what last November's election was all about," he said.