Obama upbeat about stimulus, but not much has been spent

McClatchy - Yahoo ^ | May 27, 2009

[pleikumud]

"Only a small part" of the nation's $787 billion economic stimulus had been spent through the end of last month, according to congressional analysts, despite the Obama administration's boasts Wednesday that the plan is a big success. "One hundred days later, we are already seeing results," President Barack Obama said during a visit to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada . "Across America, recovery is under way," Vice President Joe Biden said in a statement accompanying a 28-page progress report. However, Douglas Elmendorf , the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office , was more cautious in his "State of the Economy" review to the House Budget Committee last week. "The economy will stop contracting and resume growing during the second half of this year," he said, "but the hardships caused by the recession will persist for some time." The CBO report found that through April only about $19 billion in stimulus funds has been spent.

[pleikumud]

Congress rushed to approve the $787 billion stimulus package early this year, but very little of it has been used despite unemployment rising to 9.5%. Congress should now rush to repeal about $750 billion of it to reduce the swelling of our national debt.

We need lower taxes and huge reductions in federal spending. We don't need more federal involvement in health care, or the idiotic cap & trade legislation. The Fair Tax (see www.fairtax.org) is a good solution. It gets rid of the federal income tax and the IRS and would result in unprecedented economic growth.

[FlingWingFlyer]

“We need to get rid of some of this ‘stimulus’ money! Who wants ice cream?! “ - Bari O

[Vaduz]

I wonder why our fearless leader won’t go to the flat tax program do they get stiffed?

[Lmo56]

A helluva lot of the stimulus money is going to go into construction projects - such as the re-paving of 1 mile of New Hampshire Avenue in MD just outside DC.

This project has already begun and will wrap sometime in autumn ... THEN, what will the 15 or so workers do ???

They ain’t gonna go to another state, since the poor slobs there need jobs - if only for a little while.

What is needed is to bring the manufacturing base back to this country - permanent jobs. And, thats only gonna happen if you give private industry incentives ...

[crazyshrink]

Stimulus money???????? What stimulus money??????

All the stimulus was, was a payback to democrats for their support and especially to be a “Democratic slush fund” for the next elections, especially the presidential elections in 2012.

[pleikumud]

Most Congressional Democrats (Socialists) say that the stimulus package was needed and they also say it’s working. But only 7% of the total $787 billion has been paid out. As usual, the Socialists are liars.

The major components of the stimulus bill are: 1) extremely small tax breaks for primarily low income people; 2) expansion of welfare benefits; and 3) spending on public projects such as roads, bridges. None of this will result in a recovery.

Tax cuts are needed, but instead of cutting taxes Obama plans to let the Bush tax cuts expire, which will add something like $1 trillion a year to Americans’ tax burden beginning in 2011. On top of this, Obama’s cap & trade legislation will increase unemployment by millions of jobs, and new taxes are in the works to pay for socialized medicine.

So Obama is engineering an economic depression. He has deliberately set on a course to destroy capitalism and freedom.

[cranked]

“The Stimulus has done its job” — Love Barry...

[pleikumud]

“The Stimulus has done its job” — Love Barry...

---

Obama is such a total liar that he has the nerve to say that, even though only about 7% of the money has been used. Meanwhile the unemployment rate has skyrocketed to 9.5%.

The stimulus package is an abortion, and Congress should now rush to repeal the remaining parts to save US about $700 billion. The stimulus package should actually be retitled “The Welfare Expansion Act of 2009” before it is buried.

Of course the Socialist Congress won’t do that. They are too busy working on new taxes, cap & trade, and federal regulatory strangulation of private enterprise which will kill millions of jobs, sending the unemployment rate to 20% by 2012. Obama may self-destruct, but he’s destroying this country at the same time.

[Popman]

Here's the link to see where that money has been alloted and how much has been spent. The link in the upper right hand is by state and it will break down by agency who is being funded.

Looking at who got the monies it is no surprise jobs are not be created.

Recovery.com

[magooey]

"but the hardships caused by the recession will persist for some time." The CBO report found that through April only about $19 billion in stimulus funds has been spent.

It'll be spent at the time to give the maximum benefit for the 2010 and 2012 elections, and not before.

[1010RD]

Correct. Though the Leftists are liars, they’re also planners and control freaks. They’re saving the big guns for the 2010 elections. The worse it gets the better it will seem.

Americans will be eating out of Obama’s hand. Rescue me! Who cares about my unalienable rights!

[pleikumud]

A few quotes from our Founders:

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” —James Madison

“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” —Thomas Jefferson

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat in our drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labors and in our amusements, for our callings and our creeds...our people.. must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live. We have not time to think, no means of calling the mis-managers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow suffers. Our landholders, too...retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must...be contented with penury, obscurity and exile.. private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance. This is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering... And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.” —Thomas Jefferson

[Liz]

Uber-Lobbyist Thomas Hale Boggs, Esq ( Patton Boggs) was interviewed by nightly news last week.

Boggs said there’s $2 TRILLION federal stumulus to be distributed.....

AND that he is getting unprecendented numbers of calls from all over the US......from those who want a piece of it.

Boggs is the son of former Cong Hale Boggs and sister of ABC television commentator Cokie Roberts.

[Liz]

There, there, FReepers. This'll cheer you up.

Obama appoints Biden to handle stimulus trillions: "I'm Sorry I'm Not an Economist"
American Spectator | 6.8.09 @ 3:04PM | By Philip Klein
FR Posted by Behind Liberal Lines

Vice President Joe Biden said it was “above [his] pay grade” to explain in detail the methodology the White House uses to estimate the number of jobs created or saved by the economic stimulus legislation, but stressed that there had been no “reasonable” challenges to the estimates. **** “I’m sorry I’m not an economist,” Biden said as he was describing the methodology. “My background is foreign policy and the constitution. “ (Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...

"Hi there, Americans. My son and brother are gonna help me disperse the trillion dollar stiumulus. "

REFERENCE Fraudster had links to fund run by Bidens
Reuters on Yahoo | 2/23/09 | BY Ajay Kamalakaran
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...

(Reuters) – A fund of hedge funds run by two members of VP Joe Biden's family was marketed exclusively by firms controlled by Texas financier Allen Stanford, charged by regulators with an $8 billion fraud, the Wall Street Journal said. The Bidens $50 million fund was jointly branded between the Bidens' Paradigm Global Advisors LLC and a Stanford Financial Group entity, and was known as the Paradigm Stanford Capital Management Core Alternative Fund, the paper said. Stanford-related companies marketed the fund to investors and also invested about $2.7 million of their own money in the fund, the paper said, citing a lawyer for Paradigm.

Paradigm Global Advisors is owned through a holding company by the vice president's son, Hunter, and Joe Biden's brother, James, according to the paper. Paradigm's attorney, Marc LoPresti, who represents Hunter Biden and James Biden, as well as Paradigm, told the paper he did not know which Stanford entity invested the roughly $2.7 million. He told the paper the Bidens NEVER met or communicated with Stanford.

===================================

And then he said........."duh."

There don’t you feel better now?

[stephenjohnbanker]

Hillary is taking corruption lessons from this administration ;-)

[AlaninSA]

Wait...what? Didn’t that bill have to be passed IMMEDIATELY (to the point that Congress didn’t even read it?) in order to save the economy?

Wow..

[pleikumud]

You wrote: Wait...what? Didn’t that bill have to be passed IMMEDIATELY (to the point that Congress didn’t even read it?) in order to save the economy?

Wow..

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You got it - they didn’t even read it, rushed it through. Now the Socialist Party says it’s working, but it’s only about 7% used. They are liars. In fact, the Stimulus Package is an abortion. It’s about handing out money to buy votes and increase the number of people dependent on government hand-outs. It’s not about “stimulus”. We need tax cuts to stimulate the economy, along with a vastly reduced federal government.

We didn’t defeat the Soviet Union in order to have in recreated here in the United States. Did we?