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Our Slice of the Stimulus
- LATEST COMMENTS
- David Miller, Good point, and I agree that there are ... - dpaul
- Amen to ohreally! Both of my parents are teachers, and ... - soleilkerpow
- Good Show overall. I notice there is a ton of ... - Desolation
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the final version of the federal stimulus package on Friday afternoon. The Senate followed suit later that night. The final dollar amount for this compromise legislation ended up at $787 billion — a little bit lower than the initially discussed $800 billion. Lawmakers also reduced the amount coming to Oregon by about $400 million from the originally projected $2 billion, as they reached an agreement on the legislation.
However, not everyone in the Oregon delegation was on board with the compromise. Democratic Representative Peter DeFazio was the only House member to vote against the bill after voting in favor of the version that passed the house last month. Fellow Democrat Earl Blumenauer supported the latest bill, saying it will bring 44,000 jobs to Oregon.
The reduction in funds for the state is most dramatic in the pool of money that will go to the state government to help plug budget holes over the next two years. The stimulus will still bring about $475 million for Oregon schools and $350 million for our roads. Oregonians will have a shot at additional money available to states in the form of federal grants.
What will the final stimulus bill mean for Oregon? What needs funding that won't get help from this money? What questions do you have about how this money will be spent?
GUESTS:
- Earl Blumenauer: U.S. Congressman representing Oregon’s 3rd District
- Greg Smith: Republican state representative representing Oregon’s 57th district
- Linda Smith: Union president for the Coos Bay chapter of the Oregon School Employees Association
- Dick Thompson: Washington Governor Chris Gregoire's Federal Stimulus Liaison
Tagged as: education · stimulus
Photo credit: The Joy Of The Mundane/ Flickr/ Creative Commons
COMMENTS: (40 total)
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Hundreds of millions of dollars has been awarded in renewable energy grants from Genomics to ethanol education with no one in this state, which I know of, except the OSU Sun Grant has any entity applied for this money. The Governor's Biomass Working Group has waned and has no direction. This is what I think the Governor had planned all along. He has displayed a blatant disregard to working with communities by offering no hope for a future stake in forest fuel management. Talk and rhetoric does not put food on the table or liquid fuel in our transportation sector. With the right leadership Oregon can clean up its forests form logging and stewardship practices of old and convert it into Biodiesel and E85 ethanol. Oregon can help elevate foreign oil demand via converting its forest and agriculture waste into liquid energy, not extension cord renewable energy and reduce the pressure on the last man standing scenario “war for depleting resources”. Solving our liquid energy needs ranks up there with the “Manhattan Project” There is currently close to 300 million in grant money from US DOE and US National Science Institute that have a pre-application letter due by the end of February, first part of March. Who is applying for this? Now with the Stimulus Plan committing close to 50 billion in renewable energy programs the question is who will be applying for this? Tuesday, February 17, we have our next meeting at the Tillamook Building, Oregon Department of Forestry, Salem. It is open to the public and I encourage all to come and take part in our future. http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/RENEW/Biomass/OBCG-FBWG.shtml Checkout the website last update date.
To my fellow Oregonians I thank you for allowing me to share my position and post my questions. I pray People are as important as trees.
Sincerely,
Timothy Edward Moles
Chairman
E85 foundation (non-profit) 503 791-2653
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The republicans know the percieved results of this stimulus will be failure, so they are rallying against it just to have leverage for the midterm elections. I think Judd Gregg asked for, accepted, and quit the cabinet post solely for a high profile denouncement of the plan. I think the three republican yea votes were solely to let the bill pass, so it can fail. And worst of all, I think their strategy is going to work.
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David in salem here, I havent heard about taking the tax off of unemployment benifits recieved. With so many out of work i would think this would be a priority to. Does anyone have any info on this matter? thx david
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I would like to hear some specific examples of the water system projects that were mentioned. It sounded a little vague. And which, if any projects, are in Portland?
Thank you.
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So far I only hear is unsupported handouts. What happens when the new money runs out. I think the noose will get much tighter on our people once the well goes dry. I see no long lasting benifit to our future generations. This is a me me me program.
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One of the best uses of education dollars would be to give parents free choice to educate their child how and where they see fit. Allowing some of these dollars to go to parent directed education including private schools would do more for having the money filter through the local economy.
If we all need to do more with less, giving parents more choice in educating their children would help individual families and small businesses while getting more dollars into the local economy. The private sector schools are not talking about cutting school days or hours and provide greater care and flexablity to working parents.
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I wanted to ask Rep. Earl Blumenauer this question: Has he seen the documentary I.O.U.S.A., produced in part by U.S. Comptroller General David Walker? (I would have started the stimulus discussion by mailing a copy to every representatitve in Congress, tying them to a chair and forcing them to watch it.) With national debt at $10 trillion and exploding, our representatives in Washington seem to care nothing for our children or grandchildren. When will they address this problem?
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We're borrowing money to stimulate the economy and it's going to disappear into a black hole again.
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I'm ashamed of my country, when I see so many people with their hands out, and bellying up to the trough to get their share of my daughter's money. Stimulus is one thing, but this bill simply digs into my daughter's piggy bank and takes every single dime.
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Amen.
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The problem with giving tax cuts to the wealthy is that they don't spend it on consumption that helps the economy and creates jobs, they just buy more small companies, consolidate them into conglomerates for efficiencies, and cut jobs! So the rich get richer and they create more joblessness and poverty in the process.
In this time of financial crisis, giving tax cuts to the wealthy is the worst thing to do, it is like throwing gasoline on a fire to put the fire out.
Conservative economics of tax cuts for the wealthy has resulted in a massive Re-Distribution of wealth from the people who actually do the work to the people who live off of investments and interest. Every since Reagan we have lost small businesses and good wage jobs by giving tax cuts to the wealthy.
And let us remind ourselves that Conservative Republicans caused this Great Re-Depression when they pushed through the 1999 law that prevented regulation and/or oversight of the new derivative financial schemes and scams. All of of our current world economic problems stem from that law! They have financially raped our nations children for generations into the future, shame on them!
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What is the interest rate for this federal money? Is it at a fixed rate? How long does the state have to pay it back?
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Yet again someone trots out the "cut the teachers retirement" argument. It's tiring and boring and completely bogus. There are NO teachers walking away with "million dollar" benefits packages. These people don't have any data, they only want to find a scapegoat. Let's see some evidence!
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If you're not making enough money as a teacher, get a different job. Let someone do your job, who's not so greedy and is in it for the love of educating children.
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Amen to ohreally! Both of my parents are teachers, and BOTH of them are being hit VERY hard. My parents currently haven't got retirement funds- their salary is so paltry that it barely covers their nessecities. Some people seem to forget that teachers are human beings who usually have families to take care of as well. It doesn't matter how much they are in it for "the love of educating children" when their own can't eat.
And honestly, dpaul, think twice about riding hard on the teachers. These men and woment who play such a role in our childhoods and in shaping our society demand no shortage of respect from the rest of us. I can only hope to achive in my lifetime what my parents achive in a school year.
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Too bad that we're having to subvert the entire state legislative process to fund our schools. We have such hacks in Salem. Why do they waste their time? They don't do their jobs and then rely on our "rainy day" fund to bail them out.
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If a company was building cars whose wheels fell off, if a company was building houses that leaked and fell down, would anyone pay good money to one of these companies? But this is exactly what we are doing with the banks, they are run with people in charge that ran a bad business, but we are giving money to these comapnies and they are still being run by the same people.
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School funding goes up and down. Perhaps, just perhaps, we should make some cuts instead of spending money we don't have.
All we ever hear from school is screams and cries, "Cuts, cuts, ouch, ow!" We didn't hear much when Gov. Kulongoski increased the state taxpayer obligation to school funding by 18 percent two years ago. Instead of setting money aside for a rainy day, he decided to give it to schools. Now, of course, we're hearing dire predictions from the schools.
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Schools which started out underfunded, are currently underfunded and, from all evididence will remain, undefunded. Put it on a solid footing, bring it up to where it will have to be and the "schools" won't be so prone to being nervous everytime a financial downturn occurs.
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Two questions.
1. Why is it only the private sector is being asked to sacrifice?
2. Is there a plan to cut the bloated government after the stimulus package has run its course?
See: Quality Counts online at www.edweek.org/qc06
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Please, let's not forget early education as the legislature works to fill the budget gap! Our very best education investment is in comprehensive early education for our state's most vulnerable children. In Oregon this program is the Oregon PreKindergarten Head Start program. Not only does this program pay off many times over in reduced k-12 costs, crime reduction, social services spending, but it supports a large number of good jobs. In Central Oregon our OPK program employs 90 employees. If the cuts for this biennium are put in place as currently planned not only will our most vulnerable children loose but so will the state and local economies as many OPK employees will end up on the unemployment role when they could be providing incredibly important education services. The best infrastructure investment that we can make is on our children!
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Yeppers! You are so right!
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The stimulus and the debt that we will have will eventually come back to haunt us with tremendous inflation. We, as a nation, should "bite the bullet" and go through some lean times.
As far as the infrastructure projects....many will not be able to be initiated until all environmental laws and permits are in order. This could take many months or even years.
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TARP + Stimulus = 1.4 trillion dollars of direct debt not including the $600.00 per person earlier this year. This program is getting darker by the minute. Pray for our Nation in this time of crisis.
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I am an OHSU employee. The stimulus package is too little, too late. The damage is already done. Those folks who were laid off are not coming back. I suppose the package might help keep MORE jobs from being lost, but for now, my FTE was dropped from full time to .75, and I have 8 years of seniority. Another of my coworkers lost her job altogether. We also lost our shift differential which is like a pay cut of 1.51 per hour. I lost $550 per month in pay and benefit dollars with this cutback.
My husband was laid off last Monday. He worked designing and building industrial robots in Vancouver, WA.
Between his layoff and my paycheck cutbacks, I don't know how we are going to make it. I hope to get to a food bank today as we have no money for groceries at this point. I never thought in a million years that at age 45, I would be struggling this hard. Thanks for listening to me. I would call, but I am too angry at this point.
Stacey Hunter, Vancouver WA
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Prior to Measure 5, corporations contributed half of Oregon's tax base. Twenty years later, that percentage is down to less than 5%. For years, Intel was handed state tax abatements based on their promise to add 1,000 high-paying jobs to the local economy. Even when those jobs never materialized, Salem kept renewing the tax abatements, and now we watch as Intel announces job cuts of more than 1,000. When are Oregonians going to wise up, stop kowtowing to big business, and demand that they contribute their fair share to the state economy?
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"Conservative critique, or fear"? Is this just another way for OPB to show their Liberal bias? Trying to figure out how to pay for this massive handout isn't a question of being a Conservative. It's about managing our future.
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Dpaul,
Just to clarify, when I mentioned a "conservative critique, or fear," I wasn't talking about how we're going to pay for this "massive handout." I was specifically talking about the notion that this stimulus package is a sort of Trojan horse of governmental expansion. And I think it's fair to say that this is more a conservative critique than a liberal one. I was mainly thinking about opionion pieces like this one, from Michelle Malkin, in which she argues:
"History has shown us that 'Get Things Done' is mindless liberal code for passing ineffective legislation and expanding government for government's sake."
Or this quote from Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank), as reported in the Washington Post:
"What you have here is a pretty cynical attempt to take their agenda and wrap it up in a bow of stimulus and get it out the door before anybody knows what's going on.... They have got their foot in the door for a massive permanent expansion of welfare through this stimulus measure."
David Miller — Mon Feb. 16th 12:52p.m.
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David Miller,
Good point, and I agree that there are certainly more conservatives who are willing to look critically about this bill. It was more the snarky tone that was similar to what I hear in most of the media today when radical ideas are actually held up to the light of day. And, you must admit that there is some measure of trojan horse in this bill, when you look at the continuing programs versus temporary programs that are designed to get us out of a short-term mess.
Thanks, D
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As to the comment that state workers get million dollar retirement. As a state worker I know not one person who will get anywhere near that. With the last PERS overhaul I have to save over $400 a month myself to retire at 65 with my same salary.
I think we all want services but when increase taxes are proposed most say no. We need to pay up or expect less. Less police, less in road maintainence, bridge safety, and social services that in the olden times churches took care of as best they could.
I also worry how to pay for all this when the bill is due and what if it doesn't work.
ed
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At least you have a retirement account, don't you. Count yourself lucky. If you were in the private sector you wouldn't have the opportunity to retire at your "same salary." Plus, I vote for your "expect less" option.
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One of Oregon's three signature research centers, The Oregon Built Environment & Sustainable Technologies Center (Oregon BEST), is focused on growing Oregon's R&D capacity at our state's research universities as a way of fueling Oregon's green economy. Oregon BEST facilitates collaboration between Oregon's academic researchers and Oregon's business community to create economic impact in the areas of renewable energy and green building. As federal stimulus funding flows to Oregon, Oregon BEST will help transform the funding targeted at renewable energy into new technologies, services, and companies that will ultimately create new jobs for Oregonians. Read more about Oregon BEST at http://oregonbest.org
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Elected officials are out golfing? "I have not reviewed the plan" "I looked at it this weekend". "I have not seen this legislation yet"
We are in a world of hurt.
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To 'dpaul' (troll). I'm not a teacher. But I respect the jobs they try to do (with little appreciation and a lot of crap from the likes of you). We need to support them and look at them as educators not baby sitters. Most of the teachers I know want the best for their students, try thier hardest to reach them, and went into the job as a career verging on a calling (and yes there are bad eggs but, as in any field, you'll always find a few). The alternative to not educating the young is to live with a bunch of uneducated people voting and making even worse decisions and dragging the country down even faster.
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Maybe the Government will provide more job creation schemes and create more paper work for teachers and then create job for people to assess this paper work, and then create departments to devise more paperwork and tests rather than just creating efficiency by letting good teachers do their job, teaching children
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I generally think you have good discussions but todays attack on teachers was ludicrous. Typically on a well informed NPR program, the person leading the discussion refutes statements that are not based on fact and are simply made out of ignorance. One of the people who stated that teachers have million dollar retirements obviously had no statistics from which to base her facts. She is just stating her opinion. As of late, I haven't noticed too many teachers that don't have two working households, a mortgage to pay, and bills like the rest of us. You let me know when you find those teachers that are making anything close to other working professionals that require the same amount of investment in education, the same amount of pressure from parents and the public because of test scores, the same physical and psychological demands every day plus homework, and I will agree with you. But, I dare to say you won't find such a profession that pays less or equal to a teacher with these same demands.
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I was listening to the radio this morning and they were saying that people making under $75,000 a year would be receiving the stimulus. Well I am here to tell you that is not the case. I filed my taxes at my tax agency last week and they informed me that anyone who filed their taxes this passed year and received the kicker checks, would not be receiving the stimulus this go around, yet the people who didn't file last year, receive it this year. Why should the peole who file their taxes year after year like you are suppose to be punished and the people who don't be rewarded? Explain that one if you can!
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Good Show overall.
I notice there is a ton of skepticism, the politician said nothing he can be held to, and the people have little confidence. That is a bad omen.
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How will Oregon manage its forestry industry via this stimulus plan? Will Oregon apply for renewable energy grants? Is Oregon one big State and Federal Park that is off limits to industry? I was born and raised in Salem Oregon and have spent the last 5 years working in Eastern Oregon performing forest health improvements and forest fuel reduction and have witnessed the systematic attack on utilizing our natural resources. While we meet at the Governors Biomass Working Group in the Oregon Department of Forestry since 2005 nothing has been acted on or even has reached a consensus where we are trying get to. All the while forests continue to remain in a very unhealthy condition that is highly susceptible to severe wild fires and beetle infestations. Eastern Oregon communities have had their high schools de-rated because people are forced to move from loss of work.