Supporters cheer as President Barack Obama speaks at a Democratic fundraiser in Miami on Monday. (AP)
From President Obama’s speech last night at the Democratic fundraiser in Miami Beach:
“Here’s the thing about the Recovery Act people don’t seem to remember. It wasn’t just the most progressive tax cut policy in American history. It wasn’t just emergency relief for states and individuals. It was also — people don’t realize this — the single largest federal investment in education in our history.
“It was the largest investment in clean energy in our history. It was the largest boost to medical research and basic research in our history. It was the single largest investment in infrastructure since Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System back in the 1950s. And that’s putting people back to work all across Florida and all across America.”
Vice President Joe Biden will visit an Orlando middle school on Wednesday to tout Florida’s $3.5 billion share of the economic stimulus package for education.
Biden will be joined by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. They’re scheduled to appear at Jackson Middle School in Orlando at 10 a.m.
Not all of the money is being spent in schools or on teachers, however.
Florida’s three-year education stimulus cash includes money for school lunch equipment, homeless education, independent living programs and services for older blind individuals.
Perhaps the White House duo will receive a warmer welcome than Congressional members touting the president’s health care package at raucous town hall meetings throughout the country.
Officials in Gov. Charlie Crist’s administration responded to a report showing the state last in highway transportation spending by saying that states spend the money in different ways.
“We believe that all state DOTs are doing an outstanding job in implementing the Recovery Act funds,” Crist’s stimulus adviser Don Winstead and state Transportation Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos wrote in a letter to U.S. House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar, D-Minn.
Oberstar wrote to Crist on Thursday urging him to speed up highway spending. Crist’s likely U.S. Senate opponent, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami, issued a press release today saying Crist is responsible for a series of missteps with the stimulus money that has delayed potential relief for thousands of out-of-work Floridians.
(Crist was also targeted today by his GOP primary opponent, Marco Rubio, who mocked Crist for supporting the stimulus money in the first place.
Winstead and Kopelousos wrote that the report from Congress was “outdated and does a disservice to the tireless efforts of the Crist administration.”
From the letter sent to Gov. Charlie Crist on Thursday from U.S. House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar, D-Minn.
Florida is falling behind other states in putting to work its Recovery Act highway formula funds. … I strongly urge you to refocus your efforts to implement the Recovery Act and use available funds to create and sustain family-wage jobs.
Florida ranks last among all states in spending its share of highway money from the U.S. economic stimulus plan, a congressional committee said on Thursday.
In a letter to Florida Governor Charlie Crist, the committee’s chairman, Rep. James Oberstar, wrote that as of June 30, Florida had begun construction on highway projects totaling only 2 percent of the $1.346 billion set aside for it in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
“I strongly urge you to refocus your efforts to implement the Recovery Act and use the available funds to create and sustain family-wage jobs,” said Oberstar, who heads the House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
Boasting a seven-casino empire throughout Florida, the Seminole Tribe is awash in gambling dollars. The Miccosukee tribe has fared well, too, with its casino operations in Miami-Dade.
Despite the two tribes’ growing wealth, the Obama administration has awarded them a combined $4 million in federal stimulus money. That may rise in the coming months as federal agencies continue to dole out stimulus grants.
U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, a Tequesta Republican who Democrats apparently hope will just quit his office (they’ve yet to field an opponent), was put in the crosshairs Wednesday of the latest round of stimulus politics.
Hoping to push back against Republican claims that the stimulus plan isn’t working, the Democratic National Committee released a cable today ad (watch to the right) that targets veteran Republicans who are “playing politics with our economy.”
Rooney, a freshman lawmaker, is not included in the ad, but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee simultaneously sent out this press release questioning Rooney’s commitment to law enforcement:
All 50 states moved quickly to qualify for their share of the money. But since then the pace has slowed considerably, particularly in California and Florida, where the effect of the economic crisis has been especially severe.
…
In Florida, not a single highway project had been given the go-ahead to start construction by July 10 — even though the state, with an unemployment rate of 10.6%, had 272 projects valued at more than $1 billion approved by the federal government.
Dave Lee, the administrator in the policy office of Florida’s Department of Transportation, said four projects were approved after July 10.
Florida was actually one of the earliest states to submit highway projects for funding under the Recovery Act. Asked what happened after that, Lee paused for a long while before saying, “We’re all trying to do the best we can.”
Gov. Charlie Crist received an update this morning from his “stimulus working group” and the news, as usual, was mostly good. The state’s take of stimulus dollars was up to $15.3 billion, according to Crist’s stimulus advisor Don Winstead.
Gov. Charlie Crist was one of the few Republicans to support President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package this year.
He remains divided from many in his party as he reports that the stimulus plan is “working very well” in Florida (although he attributes this point of view to his stimulus czar, Don Winstead).
But Crist is not ready to get behind a second round of stimulus, which his likely Democratic U.S. Senate opponent, Kendrick Meek, says will be needed.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush told the L.A. Times in January that he was impressed with President Obama and called the Democrat “smart, disciplined, not rash.”
But in an interview with Esquire magazine published today, Bush accuses Obama of having a “secret plan” he kept from voters in the campaign:
“He would not have gotten elected if he’d said, “My idea is to create a $1.8 trillion deficit for the next fiscal year. My idea is to spend $750 billion [the president's budget estimate puts this figure at $630 billion] over the next ten years on a government-sponsored, government-subsidized health-care policy. My idea is to create a massive cap-and-trade system [based on the idea] that CO2 is [a] pollutant and we need to tax it in a massive way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.” … Had he said what he was going to do as a candidate, [Obama] would have lost.”
Bush goes on to compare approval ratings of his brother, former President George W. Bush, and Obama.
U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, above left, said tonight that the country will probably need another round of stimulus money before long.
“There is more that needs to be done,” Meek said in an interview.
Meek, the frontrunner for the Democratic U.S Senate nomination, was responding to a story in the Palm Beach Post on Sunday that showed Florida is receiving fewer stimulus dollars per-person than any state in the country. Meek said he was planning to review the numbers when he returns to Washington.
“I’m going to pay very close attention to that,” Meek said. “It’s definitely worth looking at and seeing if there are future stimulus packages that Florida gets its fair share.”
Meek said the economy was not turning around as fast as Democrats had hoped. He said plenty of jobs had been saved with stimulus money, but not enough new jobs have been created.
Floridians so far have received less federal stimulus money than any of their fellow Americans, despite an unemployment rate here that ranks among the highest in the country and a budget crisis that few states can match.
Calabro
“It just shows how inept Florida’s government officials are,” Florida TaxWatch President Dominic Calabro said. “Relying on Washington has always been a bad deal for Florida.”
Florida has received more total dollars than all but three other states from a stimulus pot of about $198 billion so far for infrastructure projects and social services, according to figures reported this week by The Wall Street Journal.1 That total includes money Congress left for states to divide among themselves and other dollars that federal departments have already disbursed.
But Florida received just $505 per person, which ranks last among the 50 states, all U.S. territories combined and Washington, D.C., according to a Palm Beach Post analysis of the Journal’s data.
The numbers raise significant questions about the stimulus program, which President Obama said during a February stop in Fort Myers would help curtail the state’s rising unemployment rate.2
President Barack Obama today marked the 100th day of the stimulus package by releasing “100 Days, 100 Projects,” a report that highlights progress of the U.S. American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Here are the Florida projects included in the report:
Tax-hating Sen. Mike Haridopolos took part in a Tally “tea party” this afternoon where several hundred protesters gathered outside the Old Capitol.
Earlier in the day, Governor Charlie Crist touted April 15th – tax day – as an opportunity for Floridians to take advantage of the new federal tax break crediting first-time homebuyers with $8,000 towards the purchase of a new home.
Hours later, Haridopolos dumped on the president’s stimulus plan at the protest – one of multiple events throughout the nation – even though more than $2 billion of his chamber’s budget depends on the stimulus funds.
Earlier this week, Haridopolos released a video blasting the federal stimulus package, calling it “something we simply can’t afford.”
Haridopolos, who signed a pledge not to raise taxes when he took office, addressed the crowd briefly.
The Melbourne Republican was accompanied by Senate Majority Office staff, who brought their own tea.
The aides didn’t dump their tea bags, however.
They brought them back to the office for consumption later. After all, it is a tough budget year, even for Republicans.
Inspired by the tea-dumping Bostonians of 1773 and the February rant of CNBC’s Rick Santelli, organizers say they will draw at least 1,000 people to a Wednesday “Tea Party” protest of federal spending and deficits in downtown West Palm Beach.
More than 40 such events are planned in Florida on Wednesday and more than 600 across the U.S.
In his seventh video released in the past two weeks, Sen. Mike Haridopolos takes aim at the federal stimulus package, calling it “something we simply can’t afford.” But Haridopolos and his fellow Republican leaders in the state legislature are planning to use nearly every stimulus dollar available to plug $4 billion of a $6 billion budget hole this year. Both chambers are hoping to approve their competing spending plans this week.
So how is the state going to use the stimulus dollars? Haridopolos offers a preview:
“This stimulus package, sadly, is not going to be helping that many folks,” Haridopolos said. “Instead, it’s just going to grow government programs at your expense.”
The Senate budget plan includes no boost to health care spending despite $1 billion earmarked from the federal stimulus package and an anticipated $1 billion from a proposed cigarette tax hike.
That’s raised the bipartisan hackles of Senate Health and Human Services budget committee members, including Chairman Durell Peaden, who phoned in his complaints on Friday to Gov. Charlie Crist.
“You want it in oral communication or blood pressure readings?” Peaden, R-Crestview, said of his disappointment.
Peaden said he has no clue where the money meant for health care is going.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said.
Part of the stimulus money is going to pay for programs for the medically needy and to accommodate increases in the Medicaid caseload, as required to get the federal stimulus money.
But nearly $800 million of the stimulus money is going to be used for non-health care programs and replaced with money a buck-a-pack cigarette tax proposal — if it passes.
Either way, the buck-a-pack cigarette tax proposal will generate $1 billion to offset the more than $1.3 billion the state now pays for tobacco-related illnesses, the proposals sponsor Sen. Ted Deutch said.
“This legislation will generate in excess of $1 billion in the first year. That is new revenue that will go into the health care trust fund for the purpose of funding health care,” Deutch, D-Boca Raton, said..
Sen. Nan Rich called the fund shift a “bait-and-switch” that defies the intent of the federal stimulus plan. (more…)
The U.S. Department of Education this morning published its application for a handful of states — including Florida — that need a special consideration to receive federal stimulus money for schools.
Congress wanted to withhold education money from states that have cut K-12 spending in recent years, but the U.S. DOE will approve the stabilization cash if states can prove that public schools still receive the same proportion of the state’s budget.
Commissioner Eric Smith said he hoped to return the application by the end of the week in order to get a ruling from the U.S. DOE by mid-April.
Here’s the link to the document the feds published. And we extracted the relevant part here.
Where's the money? Use The Post's interactive database of who wants and who's getting federal dollars.
Use these interactive graphics to find and contact Palm Beach County and Treasure Coast legislators.
