The Obama administration estimates that almost all of the $700 Billion bailout will be recovered from the banks, the auto companies, the insurance company AIG, and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  A year ago the administration estimated that the bailout would cost almost $500 Billion.  Part of the bailout purchased bank stocks, which have gained in value since the economy started to recover and once sold off will make a profit.  Bank loans are starting to be paid off in full with interest, leading to more financial gains for the government program.  The government is now estimating the true cost of the bailout will only be about $87 Billion.  The government will soon sell 1.5 billion shares of it’s total 7.7 billion shares in Citigroup purchased in 2009 for $3.25 a share.  Shares in Citigroup are now currently trading for $4.67.  Around $11 Billion is expected to be made in profit from the sale of Citigroup shares.

The federal deficit and the total national debt will now be lower that previously expected because of the lower costs from the TARP bailout.  The administration says that they expect the cost could fall even further and possibly even completely pay for itself.  Even without further lower estimates the current cost seems to be well worth the price to stabilize the world’s financial markets and prevent a global depression.

A new BBC poll shows that the rest of the world is viewing the U.S. much more favorably since Barack Obama became president.  Under George Bush Russia and China had better positive ratings from the rest of the world than the U.S.  Now 40% of those polled had a positive view of the U.S., up from 28% when George Bush was president.  The EU had the highest positive ratings with 52%, followed by the UK (51%), the U.S. (40%), China (34%), Russia (30%), then Iran (15%).  Around 30,000 people were polled in 28 countries for the results.

Obama has been criticized by Republicans for attempting to renew a new nuclear arms treaty with Russia.  The new START treaty would limit the number of nuclear warheads to 1,550, a two-thirds reduction from the original START treaty.  The number of nuclear missile launchers will be reduced by half.  It’s seen by the international community as a break through to stop nuclear proliferation.  It has even led to Ukraine announcing today that it would get rid of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, enough to build several nuclear weapons, which the U.S. has been attempting to accomplish for nearly 10 years.  China and Russia are now on board with sanction for Iran, which George Bush was never able to accomplish.  These are important steps to reach Obama’s goal of locking down all nuclear weapons and nuclear material in four years in order to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists.  Republican criticism of Obama’s nuclear proliferation stance is counter to what their platform views were under Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan said that nuclear weapons are “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.” … “[F]or the eight years I was president,” he wrote in his memoirs, “I never let my dream of a nuclear-free world fade from my mind.” … “We live in a troubled world, and the United States and China, as two great nations, share a special responsibility to help reduce the risks of war. We both agree that there can be only one sane policy to preserve our precious civilization in this modern age: A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. And no matter how great the obstacles may seem, we must never stop our efforts to reduce the weapons of war. We must never stop at all until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of this Earth.”

The Obama administration set its target for reducing the energy used by the federal government by “28 percent by 2020.”  The U.S. government is the largest energy consumer in the United States and this reductions will not only help to reduce the countries contribution to climate change, but will also result in “$8 to $11 billion in avoided energy costs through 2020.”

President Obama said, “as the largest energy consumer in the United States, we have a responsibility to American citizens to reduce our energy use and become more efficient.”  “Our goal is to lower costs, reduce pollution, and shift Federal energy expenses away from oil and towards local, clean energy.”

The various agencies will be requires to measure their current energy and fuel use to become more energy efficient as well as switch to alternative energy sources such as wind and solar.  All of the information for the agencies and the changes they make will be available online as part of a new open government initiative by the Obama Administration.  You can read the full White House press release here.

The Obama administration met with the Secular Coalition for America in Washington, DC on Friday February 26.  The Secular Coalition for America represents a broad coalition of Atheist, Freethought, and Humanist organizations such as the American Atheists.

Dr. Ed Buckner, President of American Atheists, said “We are delighted that we will get the chance to speak to and to hear from the Obama administration at the briefing with the Secular Coalition for America tomorrow. We will not be seeking support for Atheism from the federal administration, because we know they must be neutral and because we are confident that our conclusions can compete and win in the marketplace of ideas, unaided by government. We seek an end to special rights for religious ideas and beliefs–in all regulations, laws, procedures, and pronouncements. The privileging of religiosity violates the First Amendment and good sense.”

The Obama administration has expressed a willingness to meet with all sides of the political and religious spectrum.

There have been many indicators that the U.S. is slowly pulling out of the current recession.  December 2009 was the first month since December 2007 that more jobs were added to the economy than lost.  Unemployment went down last month from 10 to 9.7 percent, and jobs were added in the health, education and professional services, and retail employment sectors.  The major factor the unemployment rate didn’t drop even more was because of the job losses in the housing sector, which continues to decline because of the housing bubbles collapse.

The following graph released from the Office of the Speaker was compiled with information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The graph shows the worst of the job loses were during the Bush Administration and jobs began to almost immediately recover after Obama was elected.  There were more jobs lost than added under Bush and more jobs added than lost under Obama.  Obama implemented stimulus spending to encourage economic growth that created new jobs and averted further job losses in most sectors.  The unemployment rate is a lagging indicator, so it recovers slower than net jobs added, which is why it is only now starting to recover.  With the current rate of job recovery we should start seeing a slow decline in the unemployment rate over the next few months.

The Whitehouse.gov website reports the “nation’s fleet of wind plants grew by 39% last year alone.”  The industry was expected to lose approximately 50% of its plants and jobs during the year of 2008.  Because of stimulus spending the industry was able avoid a 50% decline.  They instead grew the green wind energy sector by 39%.

The White House website says, “America’s wind power fleet will avoid an estimated 62 million tons of greenhouse gases annually, equivalent to taking 10.5 million cars off the road.”  With further commitment to the clean energy the United States should see a direct benefit by adding green jobs and by reducing the impact the country has on climate change.

Early last year, before [ARRA], the industry anticipated that in 2009 wind power development might drop by as much as 50% from 2008 levels, with equivalent job losses.  The clear commitment by the President to create clean energy jobs and the swift implementation of ARRA incentives by the Administration in mid-summer reversed the situation. Recovery Act incentives spurred the growth of construction, operations and maintenance, and management jobs, helping the industry to save and create jobs in those sectors and shine as a bright spot in the economy.

The use of private contractors has surged under the Obama administration.  Private military contractors now account for between 22% and 30% of the total U.S. forces in Afghanistan.  Military contractors are often paid 4 to 5 times what the U.S. pays its own military, which dramatically increases the cost of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Removing military contractors from the wars would save needed monetary resources.  The changes would also shift responsibility for the wars back to the military and ensure greater oversight over military operations.

U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson will introduce legislation that would de-fund private contractors who engage in illegal or unethical behavior like Blackwater.  Contractors are already “barred by DOD regulations from taking part in ‘offensive’ operations,” but regularly take part in offensive operations despite the ban.  Contractors like Blackwater have been involved in several bloody acts of violence against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The use of private contractors has tarnished the image of the U.S. abroad and put our security goals in Iraq and Afghanistan at risk.

Also introduced by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and U.S. Representatives Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) was the  Stop Outsourcing Security Act.  The legislation would take inherently governmental functions away from private contractors and put them back into the hands of the military.  It is believed by the lawmakers that carrying weapons on behalf of the U.S. government should be restricted to the U.S. military.

The Stop Outsourcing Security Act would take vital military functions out of the hands of contractors, reducing our reliance on unaccountable private security contractors in the theater of battle.  The S.O.S. Act would not phase-out the hundreds of thousands of contractors providing non-military support services for the Armed Forces.

U.S. National Debt in Dollars And As Percent of GDP

Bill Clinton signed the largest deficit-cutting plan in history saving more than $1 trillion over a seven year period. Bill Clinton’s economic plan passed in August of 1993 was designed to return the country back to fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets. Not one Republican voted to support the balanced budget package in the Senate. The only reason it passed was because Al Gore broke the 50-50 tie in the Senate by casting his vote in support of the bill as the Vice-President. Through the Clinton administration the country saw the largest economic growth in U.S. history.

When George Bush took office Republicans abandoned the principles laid out for deficit reduction during the Clinton administration. 24 of the current Republican Senators still in office voted to expand Medicare in 2003 in order to provide prescription drug benefits to seniors. This was a win to help buy votes from a core group of seniors. The votes also provided a gain for the drug industry to increase their profits. Democrats objected to this expansion because the spending was not offset by taxes or spending cuts and because smarter legislation would have been able to reduce the cost of prescription drugs through drug importation from Canada without increasing government spending. The Republican expansion cost approximately $500 billion to $800 billion over a 10 year period. This spending was added directly to the deficit. These same Republicans are now opposed to the current health care legislation being passed even though it’s completely paid for by spending cuts and tax increases. The current health care bills cost about the same as the Republican expansion of the prescription drug progam, but it provides near universal health care to all Americans instead of a single ineffective program. The current health care legislation being proposed by Democrats actually reduces the deficit by $132 billion over ten years and nearly $1 trillion dollars by the end of the second decade after it is enacted. This type of program should be applauded by anyone concerned with our debt.

George Bush left a legacy ignoring fiscal responsibility and returned to spending money that we needed to borrow from other countries like China. The deficit in 2009 reached $482 billion, which does not even include the $80 billion that Republicans needed to pay for their war costs. Republicans wanted the debt to appear lower than what it actually was so they did not include war costs in their budget estimates. Why did conservatives not enact PayGo legislation that Democrats are in favor of that would require the government to offset any new spending increases with tax increases or spending cuts? We paid for the Bush tax cuts by adding that money to the national debt. Where were conservatives when George Bush implemented his huge tax cuts to millionaires without providing a way to pay for them? Where were the conservatives raising people’s fears about the size of the deficit during the Bush administration when they had the most power to do something about it? It’s politically difficult to raise taxes on anything when it’s needed.

Conservatives historically don’t care if they are adding to the deficit, but when a Democratic administration is elected somehow it’s a big concern of theirs. The bail outs and the other economic programs were started by a conservative administration, but yet they blame Obama for these programs. Do conservatives think Obama wanted to bail out banks trying to bring the economy back from the brink of collapse? The reason the economy was in dire trouble was because of the conservative principles of deregulation and fiscal irresponsibility that led to the housing and credit crisis. Obama and the Democrats needed to step in and fix the issue and because of these policies the economy appears to have turned around. The first key priority of the Obama administration that we can judge his fiscal responsibility when it comes to the debt and spending are the current health care bills, which are deficit neutral.

U.S. National Debt As Percent of GDP

The fact is the national debt and deficit numbers look large because the U.S. economy is large. Economists believe the best number to look at is the percentage of the debt to GDP and the current debt under Obama is only 2 to 3 percent of our GDP which is equivalent to what we had when Reagan and the first Bush left office and before Clinton was able to rein in the debt numbers. Should we be concerned about our debt? Yes. But are things as dire as conservatives would hope everyone believes? No.  You can see that the Reagan and Bush administrations added more to the national debt in recent history than Democratic administrations when the percentage actually decreased.