Posted on 02/10/2009 5:38:39 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Last month, the House of Representatives passed the “Pelosi Pork Package,” a massive spending bill disguised as a stimulus plan. I joined every one of my Republican colleagues and 11 of my Democrat colleagues and voted against this obscene bill, standing up for the American taxpayer and our future generations.
The total cost of this spending bill is a whopping $820 billion. However, this country already has a $10.6 trillion deficit, so we must borrow this money. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that we will have to pay an additional $347 billion in interest, racking up the total cost of this bill to more than $1.1 trillion. With this one vote, if it is passed by the Senate, Speaker Pelosi and her leadership team will have increased the national deficit by almost 10 percent.
I am not opposed to an actual stimulus bill; in fact I voted for the first stimulus package. But the spirit of a stimulus bill is to stimulate the economy as quickly as possible through one-time activities. Instead, Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team used Americans’ desire for economic assistance and President Obama’s popularity to pass a bill filled with long-termed spending projects that would have little to no immediate impact on the economy.
Some of the projects that will supposedly stimulate the economy in the Speaker’s bill: $600 million to purchase new cars for government workers, $25 million to rehabilitate off-roading trails for all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), $34 million to remodel the Department of Commerce headquarters, and $400 million for climate change research. All told, the plan establishes at least 32 new government programs at a cost of over $136 billion. That means more than a third of this plan’s spending provisions are dedicated to creating new government programs. I am not quite sure how the Speaker feels this will stimulate the economy, but I do know this is not sound economic policy.
Government does not create wealth. It simply takes money from one person’s pocket and puts it in another’s. Speaker Pelosi would do well to remember that in the future, before she burdens our children and grandchildren with trillions more dollars of debt.
I don’t think she’s smart enough to know how to care.
No wonder people like “Nadya Suleman” think that the government is making tons of money to send specially to her to bankroll her little hobby and doesn’t cost anybody anything except the government which is set up specially for her. Poor babies. I feel sorry for them, but I suspect that Nadya ain’t finished yet.
Over the weekend I read "Faith, Hope and $5000 -- The Story of Monsanto" by Dan J. Forrestal(1977). John H. Queeny started up The Monsanto Company in 1901 in St. Louis with $5000 and a idea to manufacture saccharin. By 1977 Monsanto, By 1876 the company had 4 billion dollars in assets and had captured 4.25 billion in sales for that year.
If John Queeny were around today with an idea to make a chemical product and had $500,000, he wouldn't have snowball's chance in Hell considering the way the government treats business..
A real stimulus package would take off the reins and give commerce room to run. Of course handing out cash, with the usual strings attached is what the government wants. To companies that accept government money, I want to scream, "Look out! You are being pimped!"
That's a lot of hockey sticks.
$400 for real research might pay off. We could investigate new products and services, but this government wants adversaries to progress.
This the real world, not a middle school project.
It would nice if this had appeared in the MSM. I suppose I can just dream on.
It is absolutely correct that the government cannot create real wealth. If it could, it would most certainly confiscate it in the name of the common good. What it does create is the illusion of wealth with the upside of inflation. And that is exactly what the so called stimulus bill does, it injects a dose of inflation into an economy that is deflating now. Even if we accepted the assumtion that disinflation after a prolonged period of inflation is a bad thing (of course it is always bad as the government views it), it has been estimated that it can take up to 9 quarters for an inflationary episode to kick into full gear as a result of action by the Fed. Because so much of the package is financed, rather than simply handing over printed money, the real inflationary pressure from it will take much longer to be felt.
No one should be fooled into thinking this package will do anything other than eventually rob everyone of the value of their life savings. No one, and I mean no one gets anything for free. We pay for it with taxes or we devalue our currency and pay for it that way. The governemnt seems to prefer paying for its lavish overspending with inflation to avoid having to answer to the citizenry at tax time and this appears to be the worst path because it is highly disorderly and unpredicatable regarding who ends up hurt by it and to what degree. What is happening right now is that the seeds of the next economic bust are being planted because the piper always comes calling, and he gets paid willingly or he takes it out of our hides. The question regarding whether we will have any hide left when he comes around again will remain to be seen.
This whole thing reakes of having been here before. It’s funny how history repeats itself, and this particular part of history feels more like a reocurring nightmare. The fact that politicians stand up in front of the press lying about the situation in which we find ourselves, saying that inflation is the only way out of this mess without saying it is not helpful. Of course, I’m positive I can expect nothing more from the very entity that keeps putting us on this inflationary rollercoster ride straight through hell.
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