"Stimulus" Bill

[Guest]

The House of Representatives is nearing a vote to approve the largest, most irresponsible spending bill in history. They are calling it a “stimulus” bill but in fact it is the mother of all pork. The reality is that only a small percentage of the money will be spent by 2011! The only way to stop it is to contact your representative and tell him to vote against the bill. Representative Holt’s local office number is: 609 750-9365. Cal him NOW.

[Guest]

This Bill is intended to revive the economy. I don't think a "do-nothing" Bill will help the economy.

[Guest]

First off, Holt will not listen he only votes party line.

Second, I agree that this bill just like the last one is a waste of money and pork. The problem is that party politics (both sides) take interest and as a result money is spent with little benefit. The only way to create real benefit is to not have these people in charge. I do think Obama is trying to work both sides and obtain compromise. The problem is not at the leadership level, but at the senate and house level.

[Guest]

If you look at what is in this bill, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is intended to insert the Government into every part of your life. Only a small part will be spent in 2009 and 2010 and over $60 Billion will not be spent until after the end of Obama’s first term. And it needs to be passed without time to even consider the effects on the country? The intended consequences of this bill are horrendous and the unintended consequences will be even worse. Help stop it.

[Guest]

It is becoming clear why the guys in Washington don't mind high taxes. They just don't pay them.

[Guest]

[Guest]

I wonder if any of the Stout Three have added the cost to purchase the PNC site or build another stand-alone Library to the NJ request for the stimulus package yet. It seems as good or better than the $500,000 to beautify a dog park or the over $1M for a 36 hole "frisbee" course in CA that are among the current requests.

[Guest]

Perhaps some of the millions of dollars earmarked for transportation infrastructure can be used to fund completion of Cranbury's very own "bridge to nowhere" (AKA Liberty Way).

[publius]

One person's pork is another person's bread & butter.
I believe the greatest of the Greek poets uttered that phrase.
-Anonymous.

[publius]

The gop p*ssed money away for years, NOW, all of a sudden they get religion?
I guess that they only have "principles" when THEY spend money?
Do they want their boy bush to be the next hoover?

[Guest]

So which party are the fiscal consevratives again?

Note that 2008, is only through September and doesn't even include all of Bush's bail-outs. And look at the first column which is the sum total of all debt from George Washington until Ford!

[Guest]

Or check it out adjusted for inflation...

Bottom line, Reagan is the original Godfather of skyrocketing national debt and the two Bush's were his disiplines who outdid him. Gasp! Clinton is the most fiscally conservative of the bunch. Perhaps if they hadn't pushed us into over $10 trillion in debt BEFORE the economic crisis we would have a little more wiggle room to be solving it now. Isn't that how fiscal conservatism is supposed to work -- save for a rainy day rather than than max out your credit cards before you're out of work?

[Guest]

To be fair one must also look at which party controls both houses during these periods. Also, what events occurred that may have caused spending or reduced it.

[Guest]

I was waiting for someone to bring those issues up...

The issue of who controlled Congress doesn't help the case. With Bush 43 for example, his deficit spending level only went down materially in the year the Democrats to control of Congress. And in the Clinton Administration, the dramatic reversal of direction of the deficit occurred as a result of a Democratic-supported / Republican-opposed (by the clear majority) balanced budget initiative. If you re-do this same chart against which part had Congress there is not the same unmistakable pattern that exists here where the direction suddenly and abruptly changes with the change in the Presidential Party. The bottom line is if you really believe that the Republicans are the party of fiscal conservatism you have a very short memory. It used to be a mantra of the party that "deficits were good for an economy." If you go back and pick up the major papers for any given period you will find that when they are in power, the Republicans never really talk about the debt. And when not in power, they suddenly do, except during the Clinton Administration where they actually accused Democrats of being "irresponsible" for trying to balance the budget.

In terms of what was going on at the time, it doesn't answer the puzzle either. Sure, Bush 43 had 9/11 and the dept went up materially after that. But even if you exclude all increases in military spending it doesn’t come close to explaining the delta. And Reagan maintained a large deficit throughout his term, which included periods of prosperity and calm.

Republicans claiming they are fiscally conservative as a party is just a sound bite, a very effective myth that has occasionally worked to convert fence-sitting moderates. If you polled people, even today, a majority would believe it because they’ve heard it so often they presume it is true.

That’s not to say there isn’t a real fundamental difference between the parties on spending and debt. It’s just that the Republican Party knows it would have a much harder time selling that real difference to the average voter… The real difference of course is not that both parties spend; it is how they spend, the classic “guns versus butter.” Modern Republicans, except great old Ike who specifically warned against this, throw dramatic amounts of money at the military industrial complex, whether in times of relative peace or “wars,” though it is worth noting that even this doesn’t account for the biggest reason for the debt. The biggest reason, by far, is that Republicans like to give the wealthy and big business tax cuts that they don’t correspondingly offset through reduced national spending, thus they build debt through a massive imbalance between what we collect versus what we spend. This is Reagan’s classic “trickle down economics” which was funded on the back of massive national debt, not through fiscal conservatism. Even now the Republicans are playing the same games. When referring the Democrats stimulus plan they count all of it as “spending,” inclusive of the several hundred billion in tax cuts. Jindal even attributed theoretical interest against these tax cuts in quoting the figure in his speech the other night. Yet when they propose tax cuts they don’t count them as spending. Double standard? More importantly, they pitch their tax cuts as if they benefit the average American without mentioning that this is true only if you still believe in trickle down economics since the average American would not have seen much if any additional tax benefit in the Republican plan versus the Democrats version. Instead, the Republican plan invested a vast majority of its additional tax cuts at business, with a little left over for the wealthiest couple percent of Americans. And while they were smart enough in the current climate to always quote “small” business, that was more smoke-and-mirrors since their cuts were not actually structured to be any more targeted at small businesses than business in general which really means a vast majority of the benefit would have flowed toward big business. It would have just been a back-door bailout of big business with no specific controls in place to see that the money flowed back into the U.S. economy or helped create or sustain U.S. jobs.

I don’t want this post to be about defending the current Stimulus Bill so I make absolutely no direct comment on it here – my only reference has been to the Republican alternative by way of discussing the philosophical differences that lead to larger debt during Republican tenures in the presidency.

[Guest]

[Guest]