The Who:  Consider this my disclaimer!  My name is Laura H., and I'm a recent college grad.  I work for a mining company that will soon lay me off due to economic hardship (the fall of metal prices being key).  I have no political background except what I was forced to take in high school and college.  I consider myself (borrowing a great phrase from a former roommate) a "crunchy conservative:"  I have liberal tendencies, but tend to view things conservatively.  I'm financially self-sufficient, have no car payment,  and have relatively little debt.

The What:  My take on HR 1, bantered about in the media as the almost $1 trillion dollar bailout bill to help jump-start the economy.  With no political background, I'm going to read it in chunks (all 680 pages or so!) and tell you the most fun things about it, things maybe you didn't know.

The Where:  I'm going to post this on Facebook, Myspace, and my World of Warcraft Website.  I might get more energetic.  If you like it, tell your friends!

The When:  It'll probably take me about 2 weeks to go through the whole bill, and I might not stay in order.  But never fear, I'll not only post a link to the amended 680-page bill, I'll tell you what section I'm going for.

The How:  I found a .pdf that supposedly is the amended 680 page version of HR 1.  I'm not sure it's real, but I'm willing to give it a shot.  Anytime I quote from my particular version (which I will link at the end of this post, along with any other websites I use) I'll

        do something like this so you know it's a quote (and I will cite my work.)

The Why:  When I was at my first community college, I had to read a shortened version of The Patriot Act that was passed by our government.  It was scary stuff, and I learned a lot.  I decided to do it for HR 1 because it's a huge deal for the American People, I have a LOT of time on my hands, and I consider it a fantastic learning experience.  I'm not in it to change anybody's mind about our government, but if anything I write makes you stop and think a little, I'll consider myself content.  I welcome comments and questions regarding my opinions, especially if you know what you're talking about.

PART I

I decided to start at the beginning here, and began with the introduction.  The general introduction and Title I - General Provisions lasted until page 69.  I admit, I skimmed a whole lot of this.  A lot of it was "reference Subsection A" and "pursuant to the course in subsection C" and similar legal jargon.

According to the beginning, the purpose of this act, known as the "American Investment and Recovery Act of 2009" (p. 2) is to:

     (1) To preserve and create jobs and promote economic recovery.
     (2) To assist those most impacted by the recession.
     (3) To provide investments needed to increase economic efficiency   by spurring technological advances in science and health.
     (4) To invest in transportation, environmental protection, and other infrastructure that will provide long-term economic benefits.
     (5) To stabilize State and local government budgets, in order to minimize and avoid
            reductions in essential services and counterproductive state and local tax increases. (p. 2-3).

My first thought was "there are 5 goals here, and there are 680 pages to this amended bill."  Oh dear god.  So do the math.  I'm not an engineer, and got out my calculator.  Granting that you might need 2 pages for introduction and 5 pages for citations and/or credit (leaving 673 pages) it's roughly 134.6 pages per goal.  Considering that I personally could condense #4 and #5, and it would make MORE sense, I am not impressed with the current verbosity.

After this I came to Title I - General Provisions, which lasted until midway down page 69.   This covered grant receivers and grant givers (all my grad-student friends, REJOICE!), then detailed grants to the EPA, DOT, and DOHUD (Dept. of Housing and Urban Devlopment).  Nothing about schools yet (all my grad-student friends, WALLOW IN YOUR MISERY!).

Then there came a lot of items about the Inspectors General.  Interestingly enough, I had always thought it was "Inspector Generals."  I was wrong.  All combined in the DOE, NSF, NBA, NASA, DVA, DOHUD, DOT, DOJ, DHS, the other DOE, DOA (tee hee), and the DOD (and I'm forgetting an agency or two) get $193,500,000.  I did the math again and got $208,500,000.  Ok, I'm not sure my math skills are going great, but you get the idea.  And that's just for the Inspectors General. 

According to Wikipedia.org, "In a civilian or military administration, an Inspector General is a high ranking official charged with the mission to inspect and report on some bodies in their field of competency. The plural of the term is Inspectors General."  Even they knew about the plural.  According to HR1, the Inspectors General of the alphabet soup I listed earlier are independent of their respective agencies, which means they don't have to do what the agency leaders want if they think it's against the law.

My FAVORITE part of Title I came on page 14:

     SEC. 1112. ADDITIONAL ASSURANCE OF APPROPRIATE USE OF FUNDS.
     None of the funds provided by this Act may be made
     available to the State of Illinois, or any agency of the
     State, unless: (1) the use of such funds by the State is
     approved in legislation enacted by the State after the date
     of the enactment of this Act; or (2) Rod R. Blagojevich
     no longer holds the office of Governor of the State of Illinois.

Check it out, man!  Blagojevich got his OWN MENTION as someone we CAN'T GIVE MONEY too!!!!!!  How AWESOME is that?

On page 15, the Act mentions that unless you participate in the E-verify system, used by the INS, you can't get any money either.  Page 16 has a lovely item listing that all agencies have to post on Recovery.gov what they are using our money for. Staffing issues, locations of offices, and how the Inspectors General remain independent is listed further on.  It also states how no whistle-blower can get fired or otherwise impugned for being a Good Citizen.

Well, I think that sums up enough of what I read on pages 1-69.  Stay tuned for Part II.  It's just going to get better.

My Link:  http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/hr1_engrossed.pdf