- AUGUSTA -- Barack Obama's
chief economics adviser Austan Goolsbee today boasted that the Obama campaign
had helped to prevent emergency heating assistance for low-income families
from being included in the just-approved economic stimulus package which
is now on its way to President Bush's desk for signature. An increase in
federal low-income heating assistance (known as LIHEAP), Goolsbee pointed
out, had been championed by Obama's opponent, New York Democratic Senator
Hillary Clinton. Goolsbee's remarks came in an interview this morning with
Carl Quintanilla of CNBC business news television.
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- Goolsbee stressed that the main difference between Obama
and Clinton was that Obama was "more respectful of market forces."
Goolsbee was adamant that Obama was opposed to expanding the stimulus package
to include "money for low-income heating assistance through a bureaucratic
program."
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- Goolsbee's statements came just one day after leaders
of the Maine legislature had convened in Augusta to face the dire situation
of low income families who cannot afford to heat their homes this winter,
partly as a result of the sky-high price of heating oil. Some influential
members of the Legislature spoke of taking money from Maine's Rainy Day
reserves to help people who are running short of heating oil this winter.
Supporters of the proposed move said the high price of heating oil is cutting
into the size of deliveries to households receiving Low Income Home Energy
Assistance (LIHEAP), with many low-income families not being able to afford
a full tank. This puts many Maine residents in danger of going without
heat, as House Speaker Glen Cummings of Portland noted.
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- Cummings and other Democratic and Republican lawmakers
want to take $5 million from the state's reserve funds to make sure that
LIHEAP deliveries fill the tank. "With Maine facing a large-scale
budget crisis, this is money that we can ill afford to spend. We need help
from the federal government to face the consequences of George Bush's obscene
love affair with Big Oil," said independent US Senate candidate Laurie
Dobson. "Mrs. Clinton wanted to send us some help right away, but
Obama's circle of right-wing elitist economics professors stepped in to
block that help. By bragging about this criminal swindle on CNBC to the
Wall Street crowd, Obama's man Goolsbee is in effect saying to Mainers,
'Drop dead.' Many here will want use the Maine Democratic caucus on Sunday,
Feb. 10 to send Obama and Goolsbee a message and tell them what they think
of this chiseling. I understand that Goolsbee like Bush is a Skull and
Bones member, and a follower of Milton Friedman's Chicago School, the ones
who worked with Pinochet in Chile. If this is what Obama will do in the
White House, we don't want any part of it," Dobson added.
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- Goolsbee also used his CNBC interview today to repeat
that Obama is opposed to solving "the mortgage crisis by freezing
interest rates," a freeze which Wall Street is lobbying against. Such
a "teaser freezer" would prevent rapacious mortgage bankers from
re-setting upward the interest rates on Adjustable Rate Mortgages which
they sold to unsuspecting homeowners. If there is no such freeze, monthly
mortgage payments will suddenly rise for millions of current homeowners,
forcing many of them out on the street through foreclosure because of their
inability to pay the new, higher rate. "Mrs. Clinton has proposed
a five-year freeze on mortgage interest rates," commented Senate candidate
Dobson, "but that seems to be a voluntary program so far. I am proposing
a compulsory federal law to block interest rate hikes and outlaw all foreclosures
for at least five years, or for as long as this depression lasts. Once
again, Mrs. Clinton goes in the right direction, but Obama's right-wing
economists are offering nothing to the hard-pressed homeowners of Maine.
Paul Krugman, a real economist, is right: the choice between Clinton and
Obama could not be clearer," she concluded.
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- For the proposal to dip into the Maine Rainy Day fund,
see:
- http://www.wmtw.com/politics/15245493/detail.html?rss=port&psp=news
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- For the Goolsbee interview, see:
- http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=643470081&play=1
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