And while staffers frantically work to finish up the final conference report, NewMajority would like to offer this illustration:

As of yesterday, the House-passed text broke down like this: $7,174,015 per word; $1,206,185,567 per page.

Both the House and the Senate version of the stimulus bill reject any congressional oversight of the stimulus funds. Both bills put responsibility for oversight into the hands of presidential nominees – without any obligation to choose any representatives at all from the other party.

Both House and Senate versions entrust oversight responsibility to the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board. The board is to be composed of the inspectors general of the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Justice, Transportation, Treasury, and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The board is to be chaired by the deputy director for management for the Office of Management and Budget or another federal officer – both again presidential appointees.

The bill also creates an advisory panel to assist the board. This panel, too, is to be chosen by the president at his discretion, without Senate confirmation, and with no obligation to include Republicans.

One Senate GOP staffer explained the outrage over this language: “One of the reasons that Democrats are forcing their expensive package through Congress so quickly is so average Americans won’t have time to digest its contents. Because if anyone knew that the check-writing process was being supervised by political cronies rather than a bipartisan group of officials, they would march on the Mall with pitchforks.”

You might wonder: Don’t Democrats worry about entrusting such sweeping powers to a possible future Republican president? It seems that they do. The bill provides for the panel’s termination a month before the next presidential election, on Sept. 30, 2012.

Documents acquired by NewMajority indicate Barack Obama overstated his real estate tax deduction on his taxes in 2002 by $792. Though he paid the correct amount in the previous and succeeding years, his overstatement on his federal tax forms in 2002 is an anomaly.

The warrant book in Cook County, Ill., and Obama IRS forms show that the Obamas paid the exact amount of taxes on their real estate in 2001 and 2003, $3,539 and $3,672 respectively. But in 2002, the Cook County warrant book lists the amount of taxes on their Chicago home as $3,631, and their IRS forms indicate they deducted $4,424 in real estate taxes, a benefit to the Obamas of 21 percent.

The 2002 IRS form and the correlating warrant book form showing the Obamas correct property tax value can be found here. Though the name on the warrant book is different from the actual owners of the property, the Obamas, the Obamas were owners of the property at this time. This is clearly a clerical error or the Obamas did not submit the appropriate paperwork to change the name on the property from the previous owners.

The 2001 and 2003 documents show that the tax error was a one-time occurrence, but an egregious error, at that.

Whether the Obamas remedied the situation by filing an amended return is not known. But if three examples counts as a trend, Geithner plus Daschle plus Obama sure do begin to add up.

Image courtesy of realjameso16.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/realjameso16/

The bill is so large that only 7 percent will be spent by the end of fiscal 2009. Yet even with this massive spending – if they divvied up and distributed the amount of the bill, it would equal $2,700 for every American man, woman, and child – there is still no aid to avert housing repossessions. Good news though for those who still have their homes: there’s $650 million for digital TV converter coupons in the House bill.

And although only 2.7 percent of the bill is dedicated to small-business tax relief, some small businesses will benefit: The bill offers $150 million in honeybee insurance.

And what a coincidence: America’s top honey-producing state, North Dakota, has two Democratic senators. Don’t look for this measure to be stripped out in conference!

With $819 billion in new spending roaring out of Washington, anonymous Democratic legislators could not resist slipping in a few pet projects of their own while writing the legislation.

As the stimulus package arrives in the Senate, it comes decorated with some eyebrow-raising items.

The Economic Development Assistance Program gets $150 million. That sounds reasonable – most agree the country could use a little economic development right now – until it’s remembered that this is the organization that members of Congress have used in the past to fund the B.B. King Museum in Indianola, Mississippi, and Astoria, Oregon’s Seafood Consumer Center.

Does this mean Congress may at last fund Las Vegas’ request for the mob museum?

Earlier in the week, House Democrats theatrically removed family planning funds from the stimulus package. But a provision in the Senate package suggests the money may soon be added back.

The D.C. Water and Sewer Authority could receive a federal payment of $125 million.

Could the $62 million for “necessary infrastructure upgrades associated with the large-scale redeployment of U.S. military forces to Guam” indicate where the withdrawal of troops in Iraq could be headed?

The State Department’s Capital Investment Fund, for “immediate information technology upgrades”,  would receive $524 million to create just 388 jobs in the United States, which equals $1.35 million per job.

According to documents acquired by NewMajority, the bill also offers:

– $190 million for “government-wide supercomputers”
– $248 million for DHS headquarters consolidation
– $30 million for abandoned-mine cleanup
– $3.5 billion for military construction
– $100 million for lead paint abatement
– $9 billion in the Federal Buildings Fund
– $240 million for alteration of Bridges

$819 billion – if that really is the ultimate total – is a staggering amount of money. A money bill so huge is the perfect place to stash a few giveaways. As things are going, the taxpayers will only learn what they have bought after the money has been spent.

Thanks to President Obama’s decision to allow states to impose their own emissions standards, the most powerful person in the industry is a former Clinton appointee to the Environmental Protection Agency: Mary D. Nichols, head of the California Air Resources Board.

On Monday, President Obama directed federal officials to approve requests by California and other states to impose their own fuel-efficiency and emissions standards.

Since no automobile company will build one car for California and another for the rest of the country, the standard set by California and its 13 or so allies will become the standard for the whole country.

Ms. Nichols is the person who will be directing those standards. Appointed to her job by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2007, Ms. Nichols has spent a year writing rules and regulations with a goal of reducing greenhouse emissions by 30 percent.

Ms. Nichols has consulted widely with industry and other interest groups. But of course, Ms. Nichols is accountable only to one state government out of 50. By subdelegating the job of environmental enforcement to her, the Obama administration has cut a majority of states out of the enforcement process entirely – and by the way, executed an end run around the federal notice-and-comment rules that give all Americans, not just Californians, an opportunity to be heard.

In another speech that same day, President Obama said: “We will make it clear to the world that America is ready to lead.” In autos, at least, the sentence would read more accurately if he had deleted “America” and substituted “California.”

In recent years, as energy prices skyrocketed, consumers reacted by conserving. They switched to high-efficiency light bulbs, lowered thermostats, and invested in more efficient refrigerators and air conditioners.

This is good news for the efficiency of the U.S. economy. It’s bad news for the bottom lines of electric utilities who make money by selling more power, not less.

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has a different idea. It goes by the technical name, “revenue decoupling.” What it does is not technical at all. It allows utilities to protect themselves against declining consumer demand by charging higher and higher prices. As consumers cut their power usage, utility companies will benefit from the ability to raise their rates to maintain revenue levels. The consumer loses the incentive to be a good conservationist while the power company reaps the benefit of reward.

This approach removes all incentives to cut down on power use. And Republicans are not the only people to have noticed.

The people who regulate the utilities at the state level are baffled. The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners wrote to the minority and majority leaders of both chambers of Congress, calling attention to the damning nature of the amendment, saying the ratemaking preconditions “will risk confusion, and could unnecessarily delay effective energy conservation efforts and the delivery of stimulus funding into the economy.”

Businesses who use electricity are angry too.  In correspondence to Energy and Commerce Chairman Waxman and ranking member Joe Barton (R-Texas) acquired by NewMajority, the American Forest & Paper Association spoke out against the proposed legislation.

The AF&PA warned the ramifications of the bill’s passage “will diminish manufacturers’ incentives to improve their energy efficiency, and raise their overall energy costs.”

So far, these protests have achieved nothing. Barton offered a provision that would strike the utility-benefiting language, only to have that provision struck down on a party-line vote, 33-20.

Waxman’s amendment was designed after his home state’s energy plan, which uses a ratemaking scale to reward utilities when consumers conserve energy.

Bad as it is, the Waxman measure does one service: It provides early indication of the gifts and giveaways that are already being tucked into the stimulus package working its way through Congress to President Obama’s desk.

“They may want to be supportive of her,” a major GOP donor told NewMajority, “but they are so out of touch that they’re not doing anything to help her by not donating these clothes.”

“They must be clueless that they didn’t make [donating the clothes] a priority.”

During the campaign, and as recently as this week, both campaign and RNC officials promised that the clothes would be donated and fully accounted for. But since NewMajority broke the story yesterday, RNC spokesmen have been denying it to national media, repeatedly calling the story “inaccurate.” Yet in none of the stories does the RNC offer any details as to these alleged inaccuracies, preferring instead to dismiss its own promise as old news that nobody is interested in anymore. The RNC repeatedly has been asked for its own version of events, but has rebuffed all questions about the location of the clothes or any timeline for making the donation.

Frum Forum Editor David Frum said that over the months since the end of the campaign he has spoken to many donors angry about the use made of their money – but that they are reluctant to make public comment. Reaction to NewMajority’s story may explain this reluctance. Frum said: “The RNC initiated a conversation with me today. The conversation was off the record, so I won’t quote it, but I think I can characterize it as threatening.” Frum added: “I said I was eager to hear of any inaccuracies in the story. I said that their denials would be a lot more convincing if they could name even one thing in the story that was wrong.”

While the clothes remain sequestered, the question remains: Why? What’s the big secret in the bags?

While Palin followed through on her promise to return her controversial wardrobe after the election, it seems the RNC has not followed through on its promise to give most of the clothes away.

During the 2008 campaign, GOP vice presidential candidate Palin was pummeled with accusations that she had overspent on clothes for herself, and even for her family — down to baby Trig. Palin asserted at the time that the clothes belonged to the RNC. They were not her property and would be returned at the end of the campaign. A campaign spokeswoman backed up those claims, saying, “It was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign.” It was also understood that those that had not been worn would be returned to the appropriate retailer; those that had been worn would be used for some other purpose, perhaps auctioned off for charity or to retire campaign debt.

The expense was shared between the RNC and the McCain-Palin campaign through a joint account, but ultimately are the RNC’s problem to deal with. The final price tag for the expensive duds from the likes of Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, as well as a number of other retailers, totaled $180,000, according to Federal Election Commission records.

But for reasons that remain mysterious, the clothes remain stashed at the RNC’s Washington, D.C., headquarters. A source close to the issue told NewMajority that the clothes are “in the process” of being donated, and an RNC spokesman corroborated, saying the clothes have indeed been returned from Palin, “inventoried and will be appropriately dispersed to various charities.” Attempts for an explanation of when and where the clothes will be donated went unanswered, and the governor’s Alaska office does not comment on campaign issues.

The fact that the clothes have not been donated or publicly accounted for, however, has angered some big donors – who want to know exactly how their money was spent, and who are already enraged by the extravagant wardrobe figure. They say it’s time for the RNC to air its dirty laundry, if you will.

“Has the party not learned their lesson?” a source who raises significant funds for the party said in response to the news of the undonated clothing. “First they make a colossal mistake of judgment by even agreeing to squander the party’s resources on these clothes and then compound the error by failing to properly dispose of them. If they think donors are going to sit by and simply accept this they are mistaken.”

Supporters of the Alaska governor should worry that the RNC’s stalling lends credence to negative speculation. Did the RNC and campaign spend more than the quoted $180,000 figure? How much was spent on other members of Palin’s family? Perhaps the RNC hopes that stashing the clothes will make the story go away. That is unrealistic; if the governor returns to the national stage, so will any unanswered questions.

Photo courtesy of dotpolka.