“Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.” ~White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel
Nothing Temporary About This Stimulus Spending
“Pushing for deficit spending as part of his own economic stimulus package in 1971, President Richard Nixon famously told ABC News, “I am now a Keynesian in economics.” Increasingly, it seems that everyone on Capitol Hill is adopting Nixon’s economic views . . . but a thousand times worse. Where Nixon wanted to deficit spend by mere billions, President Barack Obama wants to deficit spend in the trillions.
Keynesian theory, suddenly back in style, holds that government can stimulate economic growth by temporarily increasing government spending. Problem is, there was nothing temporary about increases in government spending under Nixon — and there is nothing temporary about the trillion dollars in new spending being debated in Congress.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) yesterday told Politico: “Yes, we wrote the bill. Yes, we won the election.” The House bill perfectly demonstrates how the left is using the economic stimulus bill as cover to accomplish its long-held desire to permanently increase the size of the federal government, with little or no benefit to the American taxpayer.
Today’s top six disastrous highlights are:
1. Medicaid Bailout
2. Medicaid Expansion
3. Family Planning Loophole
4. Education Bailout
5. Education Shopping Spree
6. New Jobs?
. . . .
It’s time to wake up. This stimulus bill is nothing but the permanent implementation of the pet projects of the House and Senate. And that is exactly why Speaker Pelosi doesn’t want you to know what’s in it, and certainly doesn’t want it to be debated. “We’re on our timetable.” she said unapologetically yesterday.” (Read more from blog.heritage.org)
Global Worries Over U.S. Stimulus Spending
“DAVOS, Switzerland — Even as Congress looks for ways to expand President Obama’s $819 billion stimulus package, the rest of the world is wondering how Washington will pay for it all. Few people attending the World Economic Forum question the need to kick-start America’s economy, the world’s largest, with a package that could reach $1 trillion over two years. But the long-term fallout from increased borrowing by the United Stated government, and its potential to drive up inflation and interest rates around the world, seems to getting more attention here than in Washington.” (Read more from nytimes.com)
A 40-Year Wish List
““Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.” So said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in November, and Democrats in Congress are certainly taking his advice to heart. The 647-page, $825 billion House legislation is being sold as an economic “stimulus,” but now that Democrats have finally released the details we understand Rahm’s point much better. This is a political wonder that manages to spend money on just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years.
We’ve looked it over, and even we can’t quite believe it. There’s $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn’t turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There’s even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.
In selling the plan, President Obama has said this bill will make “dramatic investments to revive our flagging economy.” Well, you be the judge. . . . By our estimate only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus. And even many of these projects aren’t likely to help the economy immediately. As Peter Orszag, the President’s new budget director, told Congress a year ago, “even those [public works] that are ‘on the shelf’ generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to provide timely stimulus to the economy.”” (Read more from online.wsj.com)
Unreal!… Stimulus Includes Government Plan to Crush New Cars
“Democrats want to include a new car crushing plan in the “stimulus” bill where the government would buy new cars and trucks that obtain less than 18 mpg and crush them.” (Read more from gatewaypundit.blogspot.com)
Me: See Hazlitt’s broken window fallacy.
Three Reasons a Spending ‘Stimulus’ Is a Bad Idea
“1) The private sector—not public spending—drives growth. Economic growth comes by individuals and entrepreneurs operating in free markets, not by Washington spending and regulations. Massive spending hikes in the 1930s, 1960s, and 1970s all failed to increase economic growth rates.
2) Giving money to states does not increase growth. Increasing federal borrowing to keep state taxes from rising is like running up a Visa card balance to keep the Mastercard balance from rising.
3) Highway spending does not create jobs. It merely transfers jobs and income from one part of the economy to another. As Heritage Foundation expert Ronald Utt has explained, “The only way that $1 billion of new highway spending can create 47,576 new jobs is if the $1 billion appears out of nowhere as if it were manna from heaven.” (Read more from askheritage.org)