James T. Walsh is a 10 term Republican from New York.  HIs district runs from Syracuse to the Rochester area.  He announced he is not running for re-election.  Because the announcement just occurred, no Republicans have announced their candidacies.

Walsh voted for CAFTA and the Peru FTA.

Walsh won a close race in 2006 against Dan Maffei, a Democrat.  Maffei had announced previously that he would run again in the 2008 race.

On trade, Maffei's website calls for enforcement of trade laws, with an emphasis on internationally recognized labor and environmental standards.

Kerry won the district over Bush by 50.31% to 47.77% in 2004.  Walsh beat Maffei by 1.5% in 2006.  The race tracker wiki is here.

Congress and the President are negotiating a stimulus package that it appears will devote about two thirds of its cost to food stamp increases, unemployment benefit increases, and individual tax rebates. While most Democrats argue that stimulating the economy in a recession is best accomplished from the bottom up, conservatives are still talking about cutting capital gains and other taxes for business in order to create new jobs.  

Dobbs' missive today:

President Bush's assurances that we'll all be "just fine" if he and Congress can work out an economic stimulus package seem a little hollow this morning.

Much like Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke's assurances last May that the subprime mortgage meltdown would be contained and not affect the broader economy. And it seems Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has spent most of the past year trying to influence Chinese economic policy rather than setting the direction of U.S. economic policy.

Remember Paulson's Strategic Economic Dialogue® that I labeled a Fruitless Economic Monologue? 

Dobbs continues:

The irresponsible fiscal policies of the past decade have led to a national debt that amounts to $9 trillion. The irresponsible so-called free trade policies of Democratic and Republican administrations over the past three decades have produced a trade debt that now amounts to more than $6 trillion, and that debt is rising faster than our national debt. All of which is contributing to the plunge in the value of the U.S. dollar.

And about the "stimulus package?"  What about that?

Bernanke endorsed the concept of a short-term economic stimulus package, but he cautioned that the money must be spent correctly: "You'd hope that [consumers] would spend it on things that are domestically produced so that the spending power doesn't go elsewhere."

Just what would you have us spend it on? The truth is that consumers spend most of their money on foreign imports, and any stimulus package probably would be stimulating foreign economies rather than our own. Imports, for example, account for 92 percent of our non-athletic footwear, 92 percent of audio video equipment, 89 percent of our luggage and 73 percent of power tools. In fact, between 1997 and 2006, only five of the 114 industries examined in a U.S. Business and Industry Council report gained market share against import competition.

(emphasis mine).

These are our leaders.

Warren Buffett told us all why he was not buying the U.S. dollar in 2003.  Because of the trade deficit.  "Squanderville and Thriftville" was the metaphor.  The full Fortune article is below the fold. (read more).  It's worth re-reading.

*****

I don't think the various candidates' stimulus packages will matter that much as voters sort out their primary preferences. What's vexing voters is anxiety that America's economic preeminence has peaked -- that our major banks and corporations have exported our productive capacities to China, even as our dependence on oil is exporting our consumption capacities to the Middle East.

Harold Meyerson, Washington Post