Read The Stimulus...

[2112]

Originally Posted by Matthew

Looks like it as been approved by the house.

House passes economic stimulus, prodded by Obama - Yahoo! News

Good for me.

[RanchHQ]

Only 1/3 Of Stimulus For Infrastructure

At first we were surprised to see this buried in the back pages of the New York Times.

But then we realized that the article points out that the stimulus money is being squandered on things that it was never supposed to be spent on:



U.S. Infrastructure Is in Dire Straits, Report Says
By MICHAEL COOPER
Published: January 27, 2009

More than a quarter of the nation’s bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Leaky pipes lose an estimated seven billion gallons of clean drinking water every day. And aging sewage systems send billions of gallons of untreated wastewater cascading into the nation’s waterways each year.

These are among the findings of a report to be released Wednesday by the American Society of Civil Engineers, which assigned an overall D grade to the nation’s infrastructure and estimated that it would take a $2.2 trillion investment from all levels of government over the next five years to bring it into a state of good repair.

The society had planned to release the report in March, but moved it up to try to influence the debate over the $825 billion economic stimulus bill being negotiated by the Obama administration and Congress. Advocates for greater investment in public works projects have expressed disappointment that less than a third of the current proposal — which could be approved by the House on Wednesday — would be spent on infrastructure, and an even smaller part of that would go toward traditional concrete-and-steel projects like roads and transit…

The current stimulus plan is weighted toward tax cuts, aid to the states, and an expanded safety net for people struggling to make ends meet. Much of the infrastructure spending it does contain would be in unusual areas. The plan devotes money to creating a database of health records, for example, and would spend more money making federal buildings energy-efficient than on repairing roads and bridges…

The society gave the nation’s roads a D-minus, noting that Americans are spending an estimated 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic and that 45 percent of major urban highways are congested. Transit and aviation did not fare much better, getting D grades. The society noted that while mass transit use increased 25 percent from 1995 to 2005, nearly half of American households still lacked access to bus or rail transit. And it said that the increasing delays faced by airline passengers highlighted the need to modernize the outdated air traffic control system.

For the first time, this year the group examined the nation’s levees, and gave them a D-minus. The report warned that many of the nation’s levees were built more than 50 years ago to protect crops, but now protect communities. It warned that the cost of repairing and rehabilitating them could exceed $100 billion.

It is altogether fitting that the article ends by mentioning levees.

For this infrastructure stimulus boondoggle is turning out to be exactly what the Democrats always do with all such money.

They use it to reward their friends and to buy more votes.

This is the New Orleans Levee Board writ large.

And we are about to get our Katrina.

SOURCE: Sweetness & Light

[RanchHQ]

Originally Posted by Matthew

Looks like it as been approved by the house.

House passes economic stimulus, prodded by Obama - Yahoo! News

Passed by The Democrats in The House, except for 11 Democrats who voted "No" along with every Republican.

Madam Speaker Pelosi and The Democrat Party now own this Bill.

Exactly as they should.

[RanchHQ]

Stimulus 101 - The Obama/Reid/Pelosi Bill:


With countless news stories, papers, editorials and experts giving their view of why Congress should or shouldn’t enact the Pelosi-Reid-Obama Debt Plan, we thought it would be helpful to give you a short index of why spending does not equal stimulus.

HIGH COST TO AMERICAN TAXPAYERS
-After Congress appropriates the FY’09 omnibus bill, they may have spent over $1.4 Trillion in less than one month!

-The current “stimulus bill” will be the LARGEST SPENDING BILL EVER enacted by Congress, making the New Deal look small, accounting for inflation.

-The “Stimulus” Bills Your Family – $825 Billion is equivalent to borrowing $10,520 from EVERY FAMILY IN AMERICA. This money has to be paid back.
If all families were asked to equally shoulder the burden of $825 Billon, this debt would be equivalent to what they roughly spend on food, clothing, and health care in an entire year.

-If Government Spending solved recessions, we would never have recessions.

BAD IDEAS – “THE DEVIL IN DISGUISE”
The hidden liberal policy agenda inside the ‘stimulus bill’…

-Over $142 Billion in Federal education funds: Nearly double the total outlays for the Dept. of Education in 2007 – making good on Reid-Pelosi-Obama education promises to the NEA.

-$87 Billion Medicaid bailout: Medicaid is funded by a formula that matches state spending levels with federal dollars. If we keep bailing states out, they will have every incentive to continue irresponsible spending. Fiscally responsible taxpayers in Indiana are now paying for fiscally irresponsible bureaucrats in Illinois.

-Expanded Medicaid coverage and SCHIP: Reid-Pelosi-Obama are enacting a nationalized health care policy with no debate. The government will soon be responsible for more health care spending than the private sector, i.e. socialized medicine.

-Green Jobs?: The myth of ‘green jobs’ merely means replacing one job lost, with a new job that fits the left’s agenda. It is a zero sum game. More than doubling spending, the stimulus also has over $35 billion for the Dept. of Energy. DOE’s current budget is $23.8 billion.

-Family Planning and birth control for children, immigrants and the wealthy, which could also be used as a backdoor to allow federal funding of abortions. How is this stimulus? **UPDATE: Nancy Pelosi agrees this is not stimulus and has removed it from the bill proving these measures are allergic to sunshine.**

-Redistribution: Refundable Tax Credits for people who don’t pay taxes.

-Pork Spending: Digital TV Coupons ($650 Million), Gov’t Cars ($600 Million), Nat’l Endowment for the Arts ($50 Million), Repairs to National Mall ($200 Million, including $21m for sod).

BAD RESULTS
-No Jobs: While they have not been able to support these claims, Pelosi/Obama promise between 3 & 4 million jobs, yet House Tax Committee staff can’t estimate even ONE job will be created.

-Ineffective: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that only 52% of the spending in the ‘stimulus bill’ can even be spent by the end of FY’10. Well short of the 75% benchmark set by President Obama.

-“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.” – FDR’s Treasury Sec. Henry Morgenthau Jr., architect of the New Deal.

BETTER IDEAS AND RESULTS
-Make the 2001 and 2003 Tax Cuts permanent, instead of raising taxes in 2011; Reduce Marginal Tax Rates for Individuals and Businesses by 10% creating new jobs. Adopting just this one proposal would create between 500,000 and 1 million jobs in one year.

-Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax & reduce the Death Tax to 15% ($5 mil. individual exclusion) Enact long-term reforms and budgets for entitlement spending., putting long-term obligations from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, front and center in the budget process.

-Assess and enforce long term spending rules in Congress. Get us out of debt!

Go to Heritage.org for more ideas and ways to avoid giving Americans a debt they didn’t create.

SOURCE: Stimulus 101: The Pelosi-Reid-Obama Debt Plan The Foundry

[pingtheduck]

If enough people believe it's good maybe it will do the trick.

[RanchHQ]

Originally Posted by pingtheduck

If enough people believe it's good maybe it will do the trick.

-“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.” – FDR’s Treasury Sec. Henry Morgenthau Jr., architect of the New Deal.

I believe that Mr. Morgenthau "believed", until he saw the results.

[pingtheduck]

It's counter intuitive, I know. Fear is a big factor too though. I need to mine for the silver lining.

[RanchHQ]

LINK: Newly Fashionable, Still Wrong - Pejman_Yousefzadeh’s blog - RedState

Newly Fashionable, Still Wrong
Posted by Pejman Yousefzadeh (Profile)
Thursday, January 29th at 2:04AM EST

Alan Reynolds on Keynesian fiscal stimulus.

He notes that for the creation of every job, we are spending $275,000. That’s a lot of money and should leave one smacked by gob, but I suppose that it is a bargain considering the fact that for every government job we are creating, we are spending $646,214.

I wonder how many of those New Government jobs will be New Union Jobs?

[pingtheduck]

Originally Posted by 2112

Good for me.

It's gotta work for a lot of people for it to work at all..

[RanchHQ]

Public Support for Economic Recovery Plan Slips to 42%

Public support for the economic recovery plan crafted by President Obamaand congressional Democrats has slipped a bit over the past week. At the same time, expectations that the plan will quickly become law have increased.
Forty-two percent (42%) of the nation’s likely voters now support the president’s plan, roughly one-third of which is tax cuts with the rest new government spending.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 39% are opposed to it and 19% are undecided. Liberal voters overwhelmingly support the plan while conservatives are strongly opposed.......

FULL STORY: Rasmussen Reports: The Most Comprehensive Public Opinion Site.