Republican supporters said their measure, which would freeze federal worker wages through 2013, would save taxpayers $26 billion. It would not apply to military personnel.

The nation’s 2.3 million federal civilian workers currently are in the second year of a wage freeze imposed as part of efforts to trim budget deficits. Sponsors said the two-year halt in wage increases will save the government $60 billion.

“We must act now to extend the pay freeze on federal workers and on members’ salaries until Washington finally gets its finances under control,” said Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., the bill’s sponsor.

Republicans also have sought to add a year to the federal wage freeze and have federal workers contribute more toward pensions as ways to pay for legislation, now being negotiated between the House and Senate, to extend a payroll tax cut and federal unemployment benefits until the end of this year.

The pay freeze legislation could have difficulty moving through the Democratic-controlled Senate. In the House, most Democrats opposed the measure, saying deficit reduction should not be carried out on the backs of federal workers. Federal labor groups have strongly opposed an extended freeze.

Still, it was a tough election-year vote for some Democrats reluctant to be seen as supporting a raise for themselves. The salary of rank-and-file members of Congress has remained at $174,000 since 2009 and is unlikely to go up as long as the economy sputters.

“What we have here is a very clever political effort to have members vote either for their pay or against their pay being adjusted,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the second-ranking Democrat.

Democrats tried to bring up a separate bill that would have stated opposition to a congressional pay hike, but they were stopped by Republicans. The vote on the pay freeze bill was 309-117, with 72 out of 187 voting Democrats supporting it. Only two Republicans opposed it.

President Barack Obama has proposed ending the pay freeze in 2013, but with a modest 0.5 percent raise.

But Republicans pointed to a Congressional Budget Office report earlier this week that concluded that federal workers, on average, receive total compensation that is 16 percent higher than what their counterparts in the private sector get.

The study found that while federal workers earn about 2 percent more than comparable private sector workers, generous federal pension and other benefit programs boost that difference to 16 percent.

“Those who work hardest to pay taxes are the ones bearing the burden of a bloated federal government,” said Rep. Dennis Ross of Florida, like Duffy a Republican freshman. “The contrast between federal government and private sector is troubling.”

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said there are now 450,000 federal employees earning at least $100,000 a year.

But Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said more accurate Bureau of Labor Statistics data dispute the CBO findings. “An enormous amount of time and energy is going into studies purporting to show that federal workers are overpaid,” said the head of the largest independent federal union. “It is just a foolish drive for the lowest common denominators.”

The House also passed, by voice vote, a resolution that would cut House committee budgets by an average of 6 percent in 2012. That reduction, combined with a 5 percent cut last year, would produce savings of $28 million.

The House also voted 395-27 for a bill that would ban use of welfare money in gambling casinos, liquor stores and adult entertainment places such as strip clubs. The House passed a similar provision in December, but it never made it through the Senate.

Many states issue welfare recipients Electronic Benefits Transfer cards with cash benefits. The cards are supposed to assist families with basic needs, including food, shelter and clothing. The cards also provide a way of tracking where benefits are withdrawn, and that’s how states discovered the withdrawals at casinos, liquor stores and strip clubs.

The legislation would require states to implement policies to prohibit use of the card in these venues. If a state failed to do that within two years, it would face a 5 percent reduction in its welfare block grant.

___

Associated Press writer Larry Margasak contributed to this report.

Republicans have pushed through the House a bill that would freeze the wages of federal workers for a third year and bar members of Congress from giving themselves a pay raise.

Republican sponsors said their measure, which would freeze federal worker wages through 2013, would save taxpayers $26 billion. It would not apply to military personnel.

Many Democrats objected to the freeze, arguing that federal workers already had done their part in reducing budget deficits. President Barack Obama is expected to propose a 0.5 percent hike in federal employee wages in this 2013 budget proposal.

But some Democrats were also reluctant to cast an election-year vote Wednesday that would suggest they support giving themselves a pay raise. The salaries of rank-and-file members of Congress has remained at $174,000 since 2009.

Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

You’ve no doubt heard of Spring Cleaning.

As much as you dread it, when it’s finally done your house is fresh, clean, and rid of the musty, dusty, closed-up winter.

Now, introduce yourself to Fall Cleaning. Like its spring counterpart, it readies you and your home for a new season. But this time you’re ready for warm winter nights, cozy evenings around the fireplace and winter holiday decorations. Fall officially begins September 21st and some transition into the Autumn mindset after Labor Day, Monday September 6th.

Fall is an ideal time to spruce up your home. With kids going back to school and starting a new year, look at autumn as a fresh start for you and your house, too.

Some once-a-year cleaning projects should be done more often. Windows build up a lot of dirt and grime during the summer. Washing windows inside and out in the spring and in the fall will brighten up your house.

A fall cleaning will make your weekly cleaning easier, as well as your spring cleaning next year.

Use these guidelines to clean and prepare your house for autumn /winter. Then sit back with a cup of cocoa and enjoy the season.

Outdoors

* Wash your windows inside and especially outside.  The summer can be just as harsh on windows as the winter. Don’t wait until spring to give your whole house a brighter outlook by washing your windows.

* Before you store your patio furniture and children’s outdoor toys, wash them off and cover them in plastic or old bed sheets.

* Check the caulk, seals and weather stripping around all windows and doors and repair as needed. Wipe down window wells and ledges. Hose and wipe down exterior doors.

* Drain and store garden hoses. If you have an in-ground sprinkler system, have it professionally blown out and winterized.

* Check gutters and downspouts and clear out debris, to avoid ice dams.
* Clean out your garage and hose out all the summer dirt and grime.

Inside the House

* Have your fireplace and chimney inspected, cleaned and ready for winter use.
* Change your furnace filters for cleaner air and a more efficient heating system.
* Fall is a good time to replace batteries in your smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors and other home safety devices.
* Get your beds ready for a cozy winter. Fall is also a good time to do twice-annual mattress turns. Flip your mattress this fall and next spring, turn it end-to-end. Launder or dry clean all bedding you don’t do every week, such as mattress pads, pillows, blankets, bed skirts and bedspreads.
* Schedule a professional carpet cleaning or rent a carpet cleaner and do it yourself.
* Clean out your kitchen cupboards and pantry, paying particular attention to baking supplies, pans and equipment that you’ll need for holiday baking.
* Pull your refrigerator, clothes washer and dryer out from the wall and clean behind them (and retrieve any long lost socks!). Brush dust off of refrigerator coils and use a narrow vacuum hose attachment to clean inside the lint catcher of your dryer.

Prepare your body’s  internal summer clean up plan to detoxify and cleanse for Autumn 2010.    If planning a retreat seems like a good idea to refresh and revive yourself, check out Autumn Equinox Weekend Getaway in California.

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WASHINGTON — After a take-it-or-leave-it vote by the Senate, House Democrats face little choice but to drop billions in aid for schools, college students and others that they had hoped could ride on legislation paying for President Barack Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan.

The Senate rejected the House measure, passed earlier this month, by a 46-51 vote that fell short of a majority, much less the 60 votes required to defeat a filibuster.

Instead, the Senate on Thursday stripped out the $20 billion in House add-ons and returned to the House an almost $60 billion measure passed by a bipartisan vote in May. The Senate measure is limited chiefly to war funding, foreign aid, medical care for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange, and replenishing almost empty disaster aid accounts.

It would bring the amount of money appropriated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan above $1 trillion.

Eleven Senate Democrats and Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut voted against the House version of the bill. Not a single Republican supported it.

The moves repel a long-shot bid by House Democrats earlier this month to resurrect their faltering jobs agenda with $10 billion in grants to school districts to avoid teacher layoffs, $5 billion for Pell Grants to low-income college students, $1 billion for a summer jobs program and $700 million to improve security along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Senate measure is likely to be grudgingly accepted by House Democrats next week despite opposition from liberals who oppose the war in Afghanistan, which many of them view as unwinnable.

A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wouldn’t comment on whether the House will simply approve the Senate measure and send it on to Obama for his signature.

But the pressure to do so is intense, especially after Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned lawmakers this week that unless the measure is enacted into law before Congress leaves for its August recess, the Pentagon could have to furlough thousands of employees.

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House Dems Pressured To Drop Funding For Schools, Students To Pay For Wars In Iraq And Afghanistan

ANDREW TAYLOR | 07/23/10 11:14 AM | AP
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WASHINGTON — After a take-it-or-leave-it vote by the Senate, House Democrats face little choice but to drop billions in aid for schools, college students and others that they had hoped could ride on legislation paying for President Barack Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan.

The Senate rejected the House measure, passed earlier this month, by a 46-51 vote that fell short of a majority, much less the 60 votes required to defeat a filibuster.

Instead, the Senate on Thursday stripped out the $20 billion in House add-ons and returned to the House an almost $60 billion measure passed by a bipartisan vote in May. The Senate measure is limited chiefly to war funding, foreign aid, medical care for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange, and replenishing almost empty disaster aid accounts.

It would bring the amount of money appropriated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan above $1 trillion.

Eleven Senate Democrats and Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut voted against the House version of the bill. Not a single Republican supported it.

The moves repel a long-shot bid by House Democrats earlier this month to resurrect their faltering jobs agenda with $10 billion in grants to school districts to avoid teacher layoffs, $5 billion for Pell Grants to low-income college students, $1 billion for a summer jobs program and $700 million to improve security along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Senate measure is likely to be grudgingly accepted by House Democrats next week despite opposition from liberals who oppose the war in Afghanistan, which many of them view as unwinnable.

A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wouldn’t comment on whether the House will simply approve the Senate measure and send it on to Obama for his signature.

But the pressure to do so is intense, especially after Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned lawmakers this week that unless the measure is enacted into law before Congress leaves for its August recess, the Pentagon could have to furlough thousands of employees.
Story continues below

The House bill also attracted a White House veto threat over $800 million in cuts to education programs to help pay for the additional domestic spending under a “pay-as-you-go” culture that the administration itself advocates.

The Senate measure blends about $30 billion for Obama’s 30,000-troop surge in Afghanistan with more than $5 billion to replenish disaster aid accounts, as well as funding for Haitian earthquake relief, and a down payment on aid to flood-drenched Tennessee and Rhode Island.

The measure contains $13 billion in benefits for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange, but does not provide more than $4 billion requested by the administration to finance settlements of long-standing lawsuits against the government, including $1.2 billion to remedy discrimination by the Agriculture Department against black farmers and $3.4 billion for mismanaging Indian trust funds.

The measure contains $1.1 billion for mine-resistant vehicles, $657 million for military bases in Afghanistan and $6.2 billion in foreign aid for Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Haiti.

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This latest program will allow owners to sell for less than they owe and will give them a little cash to speed them on their way.

More than 5 million households are behind on their mortgages and risk foreclosure. The government’s $75 billion mortgage modification plan has helped only a small slice of them. Consumer advocates, economists and even some in the banking industry say much more is needed.

For the administration, there is also the concern that millions of foreclosures could delay or reverse the economy’s tentative recovery — the last thing it wants in an election year.

Taking effect on April 5, the program could encourage hundreds of thousands of delinquent borrowers who have not been rescued by the loan modification program to shed their houses through a process known as a short sale, in which property is sold for less than the balance of the mortgage. Lenders will be compelled to accept the arrangement, forgiving the difference between the property’s market price and what they are owed.

“We want to streamline and standardize the short sale process to make it much easier on the borrower and much easier on the lender,” said Seth Wheeler, a Treasury senior adviser.

Should the incentives prove successful, the program could have multiple benefits. For the investment pools that own many home loans, there is the prospect of getting more money with a sale than with a foreclosure.

For the borrowers, there is the likelihood of suffering less damage to credit ratings. And as part of the transaction, they will get the lender’s assurance that they will not later be sued for an unpaid mortgage balance.

For communities, the plan will mean fewer empty foreclosed houses waiting to be sold by banks.

For the uninitiated, the Ice House at 3920 McClellan on the city’s east side might have seemed like the Mid-Atlantic storm made its way to Michigan.

 
The project, by photographer Gregory Holm and architect Matthew Radune, of Brooklyn, N.Y., encased an abandoned house in ice, a feat that drew photographers and onlookers once the location, kept quiet for weeks, was revealed over the weekend.

“I had been hearing about this all week,” said Willie Bird, 64, who took his cell phone out to snap a picture of the side of the icicle-covered house. “I was waiting to hear the location. It’s different.”

Bird, from the city’s west side, said he planned to tell friends the house was worth driving over for a look. “I like the formation of the ice around the house,” he said.

Thick icicles hang all over the two-story home — stretching nearly from the roof’s edge to the ground like frozen vines on one side, glittering and white in the winter sunlight.

Holm and Radune created the Ice House to highlight the foreclosed homes in the Detroit area.

The men made a deal with the Michigan Land Bank to lease the house. The two also paid off delinquent property taxes on another foreclosed house so a single mother and her children could move in.

Rebecca Keast, 28, of Hamtramck and Miguel Verdejo, 29, of Detroit were looking for destinations in the city to show their friend Kristy Smith, 25, of Ann Arbor.

“We had heard about this and we were interested in what they were trying to represent,” Keast said Sunday. “I think they’re trying to bring awareness to the real estate market and the economy down here.”

For Verdejo, who took a peak inside one of the open windows, it wasn’t just the outside encased in ice that told a story. He said he saw old furniture, books on a table and a shoe. He said the inside view was his favorite part of the visit. He questioned the future of the neighboring houses if the economy doesn’t improve.

“Those houses are going to end up like this,” he said.

Smith said she thought about the people living near this temporary art piece. The house will eventually be dismantled and the materials recycled.

“We were wondering what people thought of people in their space,” she said as she looked at the numerous abandoned and occupied houses nearby.

They only had to ask Jermaine Davis, who was walking in his neighborhood Sunday afternoon. The 13-year-old stopped briefly to look at the house, which he had seen many times before.

“It looks beautiful,” he said. “I like the icicles coming down on the side and connecting with the other icicles. I also like the trees with the ice hanging down like ice cream cones.”

By Candice Williams: The Detroit News

From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100208/METRO01/2080334/1408/local/Detroit-Ice-House-draws-crowds#ixzz0eynXcpMC

Take a look at people’s reactions to the Ice House