Democratic Chatter 2-15-2009

George Wenschhof Bio

President Barack Obama and family are spending the long weekend at home in Chicago, Illinois - last night he went out to dinner with the First Lady on Valentine's Day. Today, a video he taped promoting community service will be shown at halftime of the NBA All-Star game. CNN.com has a clip of his message here.

It is now expected the President will sign the 1,100 page, 787 billion Stimulus bill on Tuesday while in Denver, Colorado.

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Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner addressed members of the G-7 on U.S. efforts on the global economic crisis - the 6 hour meeting in Rome was attended by officials from major European countries, Canada, Japan and Russia. Geithner's initial roll out of his plan was not received very well in the U.S. last week as many felt it was too vague and lacked specifics. He explained to world leaders the plan was detailed and stressed the importance of acting now and not later. MSNBC.com has more here.

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Some industry executives complaining about pay restrictions included in the Stimulus bill - Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) included the pay limitations in the bill which is now scheduled to be signed on Tuesday by the President. Although this is a reasonable restriction on executives of companies receiving public funding, expect a constitutional challenge in the future. Bloomberg.com has more here.

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Blagojevich's brother solicited funds from Roland Burris - seems the former Illinois Governor continues to torment the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. The newly sworn in Senator filed an amendment to his statement to the Illinois House Impeachment panel. In the amendment, Burris says the former Governor's brother Rob called three times and solicited $10,000 in campaign contributions from Burris. Expect Republicans to jump on this revelation. It would also appear Senator Burris may have some explaining to do. Stay tuned. TheHill.com has more here.

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Remember the Immigration debate? - it continues to simmer as it received very little attention during the Presidential campaign and little to no attention since President Obama has taken office. The debate over the building of the multi-billion border fence begins to heat up as 8 Democrats recently wrote a letter to the President asking him to halt the construction of the fence. In 2006, Congress with then Senator Obama voting in favor, funded 3 billion for 670 miles of the fence. You can read more here.

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