Al
Trish
Allaire
According to Congressional Budget Office estimates, a mere $26 billion of the House stimulus bill’s $355 billion in new spending would actually be spent in the current fiscal year, and just $110 billion would be spent by the end of 2010. This is highly embarrassing given that Congress’s justification for passing this bill so urgently is to help the economy right now, if not sooner.
And the red Congressional faces must be very red indeed, because CBO’s analysis has since vanished into thin air after having been posted early last week on the Appropriations Committee Web site. Officially, the committee says this is because the estimates have been superseded as the legislation has moved through committee. No doubt.
via The Stimulus Time Machine – WSJ.com.
This is only upsetting to those who believe that the purpose of the stimulus is to help the economy. What’s that you say? Of course the purpose of the stimulus is to help the economy? It’s what you’re reading in all the papers? Why then is most of the money not due to be actually spent until 2011? And why is $87 billion being spent on Liberal pet projects like family planning and birth control?
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, criticized a part of the bill’s $87 billion package to help states with Medicaid costs that would allow states to expand their family planning services. Leaving a White House meeting with Obama on Friday, Boehner said, “How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives? How does that stimulate the economy?”
Well, Mr. Boehner, Nancy Pelosi says that spending money to make sure babies don’t get born in the first place will mean less children and adults that the country will have to pay for later. And if we were talking about cattle or cockroaches, I’d believe her. We’re humans though, and humans make our economy go. We grow up to build things and hire people and invest and create revenue. Since we’re set to transfer all this debt to our grand children anyway, I want to make sure that they’ll have lots of help.
But imputing the best of intentions for Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Obama (something I’m actually willing to do on occasion), and assuming that they really do think that a stimulus such as this is the only way to bring us back to prosperity (and that it isn’t all about them capitalizing on a crisis to funnel tax dollars to Planned Parenthood), are they likely to be right?
No.
The stimulus bill . . . [is] based on an old, and largely discredited, economic theory. As Harvard economist Robert Barro pointed out on these pages last Thursday, the “stimulus” claim is based on something called the Keynesian “multiplier,” which is that each $1 of spending the government “injects” into the economy yields 1.5 times that in greater output. There’s little evidence to support this theory, but you have to admire its beauty because it assumes the government can create wealth out of thin air. If it were true, the government should spend $10 trillion and we’d all live in paradise.
The problem is that the money for this spending boom has to come from somewhere, which means it is removed from the private sector as higher taxes or borrowing. For every $1 the government “injects,” it must take $1 away from someone else — either in taxes or by issuing a bond. In either case this leaves $1 less available for private investment or consumption.
[ . . . ]
The government spending will be a net stimulus only if its $1 goes to more productive purposes than those to which private investors would have put that same $1.
If 15 small businesses on Long Island can’t each hire 2 or 3 new people because they have to pay higher taxes to contribute to the $87 billion going to fund condoms, abortions and spermicidal gel for teens, then that’s 30-45 less people with jobs on Long Island. Let those companies keep their tax money (ie–cut their tax rates), forget that $87 billion for condoms, and get those 30-45 people hired and producing and manufacturing and selling and buying….
Which is what an economic recovery is all about.
Isn’t it?
Filed under: Abortion, Economics | Tagged: bailout, big government, Capitalism, dumb politicians, economy, New Deal, Politics, radical left, socialism, stimulus
I really don’t get why you are so opposed to 87 billion going to contraception and family planning. The majority of the people who receive these benefits are dependent on the state for everything: food, housing, clothes etc… Why wouldn’t you spend money to stop this population from growing? Wouldn’t that save money in the long run by reducing the number of people who rely on these services? They aren’t exactly the ones running around trying to get jobs from those small business on LI you mentioned. If I were O, I’d make sure that every adult receiving welfare was temporarily sterilized because if you have to depend on the state to help you take care of the family you already have, you do not have the freedom or the right to make that family bigger.
And to the existing children of those families, they should be taught that the state will not take care of them no matter what. that is the only way they will grow up to be independent of the system rather than learning exactly how to use it in order to not become a productive member of society. Apparently the parents of these children aren’t cutting it in that department.
As far as the future spening is concerend, we can only hope that the word gets out to enough people who will complain to their congressmen and senators and that our congressmen and senators of both parties have enough sense to speak up and curb that spending before that behemoth bill gets passed.
The problem is in the fact that these people receive all this federal and state money to begin with, not in the fact that the people exist. I mean, we could take the red pen to lots of spending all over the place if we simply “got rid” of all the people who were getting it. Let’s just say that I think that there are more proactive, optimistic and life-affirming ways of getting us back on track like cutting taxes and encouraging productivity and investment. We don’t have to resort to eliminating people from the gene pool.
Obama won’t be sterlizing welfare recipients any time soon either, will he? Who do you think he counts on to vote for him and his Democrat buddies for the next 10 generations? The stimulus package is going to do nothing for the economy for 2 reasons. First, stimulus packages are “demand side” & Keynesian and they just don’t work. Second, the purpose of this ‘plan’ isn’t even to stimulate…it’s to funnel tax dollars to interest groups directly and indirectly. This $87 billion is just one example. It is guaranteeing that the “takers” of this society remain “takers” and keep voting for the people giving them all the money—Democrats.