NH House Leaders Comment on Obama Visit to New Hampshire

CONCORD – House Speaker William O’Brien (R-Mont Vernon) and House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt (R-Salem) today released the following statement ahead of President Obama’s Thursday visit to the Granite State to discuss the economy.

House Speaker William O’Brien

“Since the President has demonstrated a profound deference to religious sensitivities in extending his apology to the Afghani Muslims for the burning of the coded copies of the Koran taken from terrorists, he really should take the opportunity of his visit to our State to likewise extend his heartfelt apology to New Hampshire Catholics.  Indeed, his apology should be offered to all Americans for trampling on their religious principles and beliefs.  Compelling Americans of any religious belief to comply with an anti-religious ObamaCare mandate stands in stark contrast to the principles upon which America was founded and has come to be the most decent country in history. Forcing Americans to choose between violating their religious beliefs and being penalized at the hands of a presumptuous government is simply abhorrent.”

House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt

“Since New Hampshire is faring much better than almost any other state in the country, we welcome the President’s visit to come here to talk about the economy. The President should note that New Hampshire is shrinking our unemployment rate and growing our workforce the right way – without government bailouts or taxpayer funded stimulus programs. He should take the chance while here to understand how, according to the monthly employment report by the state Department of Employment Security through February, 10,000 more people are now working in New Hampshire than at any other time since the start of the recession in 2008. And how we brought spending under control and reduced a historic deficit without raising a single tax.  In fact, we cut or eliminated 12 taxes or fees and passed 43 new laws that reduced regulations.  Now, our economy is thriving as our employers are gaining the confidence to add new jobs.  The President should leave his big government ‘solutions’ in Washington and learn that we can get the economy moving again only when we lift the government burden off of those who actually create jobs.”

NH GOP CHAIRMAN MACDONALD STATEMENT ON PRESIDENT OBAMA'S UPCOMING VISIT AND FAILED POLICIES

Will Democrats Stand With Obama Next Week And Campaign With Him In 2012?

Concord, NH – President Barack Obama has scheduled a trip to the Granite State on Tuesday to tout his outrageous new spending bill he coins as a Jobs Bill, but ultimately is nothing more than a Stimulus II. The nearly half billion dollars spending bill has failed in the court of public opinion in New Hampshire, as proven by the latest UNH poll numbers that put President Obama’s approval rating at a mere 41%. VIEW POLL HERE. This isn’t stopping the President from trying.  Last time he visited New Hampshire was 21 months ago when he came to promote Obamacare—another massive spending debacle that is already causing  huge cost increases for New Hampshire families. NHGOP Chairman Wayne MacDonald released the following statement on President Obama’s upcoming visit:

“President Obama is unpopular with New Hampshire voters because he is always looking to take more money from them.  He doesn’t know what Granite Staters know which is, you cannot spend our way out of our economic crisis.  The alleged jobs bill he is planning on  coming here to tout is nothing more than a 450 million dollar spending bill to pay for taxpayer funded jobs temporarily. It is an election year stunt on the backs of taxpayers and New Hampshire citizens are astute enough to know it.  Expanding government is not the answer to our jobs crisis.  We need to get government to ease regulations and taxation on the employers in this country if we want them to be able to hire more employees.  We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world and Obama’s proposed increases in taxes for the employers is not the answer.

“I’d like to know if his previously staunch allies will be standing with President Obama, his poor approval rating and bad ideas next Tuesday. Will Carol Shea-Porter, Ann McLane Kuster and Jeanne Shaheen show their support for his outrageous spending plans and tell New Hampshire taxpayers a vote for Obama is a vote for more of the same?  The President is right about one promise he made in 2008—we do need some hope and change.”

Real Bridge to Nowhere in New Hampshire

Good morning.  I wanted to bring to your attention a news item in BigGovernment.com from a Congressional race in New Hampshire. Sean Mahoney, a conservative Republican candidate in the primary to face Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, has identified an embarrassing waste of stimulus money to resurface a bridge that doesn’t go anywhere. Quite literally, this is a Bridge to Nowhere.

The pictures and video would be comical if they did not depict such a foolish waste of money.

I thought you might be interested.

Many thanks for your time,

Patrick Hynes




 
BigGovernment: Stimulus Money Wasted on a ‘Real Bridge to Nowhere’
http://biggovernment.com/capitolconfidential/2010/08/10/stimulus-money-wasted-on-a-real-bridge-to-nowhere/
 
The New Hampshire Department of Transportation sought and on August 28, 2009 was awarded $150,045 to refurbish <http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/RecipientReportedData/Pages/RecipientProjectSummary508.aspx?AwardIDSUR=15714&AwardType=Grants>  “a historic stone arch bridge [which] will be preserved and resurfaced to better accommodate pedestrians and bicycles.”

The NH DOT lists the following for the rationale for the project <http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/RecipientReportedData/Pages/RecipientProjectSummary508.aspx?AwardIDSUR=15714&AwardType=Grants> : “Facilities for Pedestrians and Bicycles. Preserve/Create jobs; and economic recovery. Invest in transportation.”
 
The project is nearly complete now but you still can’t cross the bridge to get to the other side. That’s because there is no other side.
 
As can be seen from the photos from Hillsborough, NH the word “bridge” does not adequately describe the structure. It’s really more of a pier. Nor does it appear there will ever be a bridge. The railing at the lopped-off end of the structure seems pretty permanent.
 
An actual bridge that crosses the Contoocook River is about 100 feet away.
 
Despite the $150,000 of stimulus money spent to resurface a bridge that doesn’t go anywhere, the state of New Hampshire does not have sufficient funding to repair the many functioning bridges that are falling apart. A recent report by TRIP <http://www.tripnet.org/New_Hampshire_Report_June_2010.pdf>  indicates that almost one-third of all New Hampshire bridges are either “structurally deficient” or “functionally obsolete.”

Conservative congressional candidate Sean Mahoney (NH-01) has made New Hampshire’s “Bridge to Nowhere” an issue in his campaign <http://www.mahoney2010.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=217:mahoney-releases-web-video-on-nhs-bridge-to-nowhere&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=188> .

He’s calling on incumbent Democrat Carol Shea-Porter “to come clean and explained to the American people how $1 Trillion dollars was spent on projects like this” in a new web video:

Mahoney has urged Congress <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9X7ZwI1-1U>  to stop payment on the balance of the stimulus and to use the remaining money to pay down the national debt.

redstate.com - NH-1: Guinta’s Muddy Waters On Climate

Posted by Dave Poff (haystack) (Profile)

Friday, July 23rd at 10:23AM EDT

1 Comment

I really want to like this guy Guinta; if he clears the primary I’m going to have to vote for him. It’s getting harder rather than easier though, because he seems far too adept at blaming everyone else but himself for his troubles. This is not a good sign.

I wrote in this space recently about my concerns with Guinta’s position on the Stimulus bill. His fans supporters and minions took me to task on the credibility of both my claims and my sources, and that’s ok - this is a blood sport after all.

But in my follow-up research on the details of this Stimulus flap, I found some troubling remarks…even from his own blog page (in which he attempted to clarify himself)…which seem to indicate he’s not all that good at taking responsibility for things that don’t go his way or run counter to his talking points of the day.

Article Continues Here ---> NH-1: Guinta’s Muddy Waters On Climate

"Stimulus Facts": Where the Money Went

Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, recently compiled report data from Recovery.gov and economic and political data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau, and GovTrack.us, among others. It can be overwhelming to sort through the massive amounts of data on the stimulus, but she did it for us, and her resulting paper analyzes the disbursement of stimulus funds across state and district lines for the last quarter. We think your readers would find her analysis very interesting, especially as she considers how party affiliation affected stimulus spending.

Here are a few of the facts you will find in the report:
-Every job created or saved during this period cost an average of $285,814.61 per job.

-Democratic districts on average received 1.53 times the amount of rewards than Republican districts.

-Public entities are receiving fewer contracts, but there is a higher average dollar value on public awards.

If you'd like to read more or publish the content on your blog, you can download the PDF file here. The complete data set is also available:

http://mercatus.org/publication/stimulus-facts-0

Veronique also testified before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure with her findings. You can view the testimony here:

http://mercatus.org/publication/stimulus-facts-1

If you have any questions, or would like to speak to Veronique about her report, please feel free to contact NHInsider and we will get you the contact information.