CNN

From CNN's Jack Cafferty:

Part of President Obama's appeal during the election was his call for a new era of transparency, of shaking up the way things are done in Washington.

The 1,071 page bill was posted late last night on a congressional website.

But when you look at how his stimulus bill is moving through Congress, it sounds a whole lot like the way "old" Washington operated.

Late last night, the stimulus plan – all one-thousand seventy-one pages of it – was posted on a congressional web site. This gave lawmakers only a few hours to read it before voting. No one can read a thousand page document written by lawyers in just a few hours.

so the House passed the bill without having read it and the Senate is expected to do the same thing shortly. Almost $800 billion and nobody in Congress knows what's in there. That ought to help you to sleep well tonight.

The Democrats promised lawmakers and the public would have at least 48 hours to read the thing before the vote. They lied. Again.

Old fashioned politics. Wait until the last possible moment – President Obama wants this on his desk by Monday – and then cram it through.

As the AP puts it, the stimulus bill is clearly "the result of old-fashioned sausage-making", with pet projects coming to light that hadn't been included in the original bills.

Here’s my question to you: What does a 1,000 page stimulus bill the public had virtually no chance to look at say about the new era of "government transparency"?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

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A man waiting at a breadline in San Francisco during the Winter of 1933. (PHOTO CREDIT: DOROTHEA LANGE/NATIONAL ARCHIVES/NEWSMAKERS)

From CNN's Jack Cafferty:

The U.S. economy is in its worst shape since the recession of the 1970s, and perhaps soon it will match the Great Depression. So says the CEO of General Electric.

Jeff Immelt says that unlike other downturns, this one is faced with limited liquidity. He stressed that governments around the world have gone "all in”… "firing as many bullets" as they can to stimulate their economies, and eventually "government always wins". Immelt says it's more important to move forward quickly with a large stimulus package than to worry about the details. Congress - are you listening?

And there's more. Another top economic mind, the co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co – or PIMCO – says the U.S. might head into a "mini depression" unless government spends trillions of dollars. That's trillions, with a "T." Bill Gross told Bloomberg TV "there is a potential catastrophe if the U.S. government continues to focus on billions of dollars". While Congress bickers about mere hundreds of billions, a couple of the brighter bulbs in the private sector suggest it's going to take much, much more.

Gross says that the Fed is going to have to buy Treasuries. That's because some believe that as China's economy slows, it may start buying less of our debt. Goldman Sachs estimates that government borrowing will reach $2.5 trillion this fiscal year.

Meanwhile, these grim assessments came right before today's report that employers cut another 598,000 jobs in January – the worse job loss since December 1974. It brings the unemployment rate to 7.6%. Happy Friday.

Here’s my question to you: Is the U.S. government capable of heading off a full-blown depression?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

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FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told MSNBC yesterday that the Democrats do not bear any responsibility for the mess on Wall Street.  Democrats have had control of congress for the past 2 years, and Republicans pointed out they haven't passed any legislation regulating congressional excesses.

If they had tried, it probably wouldn't have mattered.

The White House likely would have vetoed it or Republicans in the Senate would have blocked it, and it never would have passed to begin with...

Whether it's the economy, energy or foreign policy, the interests of the American people increasingly take a backseat to partisan politics, finger-pointing and the blame game.

There's no commonality of purpose to cooperate in the interests of our citizens. The parties only pretend to care about us, but they don't really.

What they care about is holding onto power at all costs - which is why this presidential election is going to "cost" in the neighborhood of one billion dollars.

And you can bet Congress will take its next vacation the end of this month right on schedule.

Here’s my question to you: What would it take to restore your faith in our government?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

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