Posted on 03/28/2020 7:04:37 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
NEW YORK - Republicans who have spent the past decade howling about the danger of ballooning deficits embraced the coronavirus rescue package approved by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump, shrugging off past concerns about spending in the face of a public health crisis.
In many cases, the conservatives who backed the $2 trillion bill - the largest economic relief measure in U.S. history - were the very same who raged against the nearly $800 billion economic stimulus package backed by the Obama administration.
But facing the unprecedented threat of a global pandemic - and working under a Republican president who has largely brushed off concerns about debt and deficits - the GOP was willing to overlook an unprecedented flood of taxpayer spending. Leading budget hawk Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., who insisted in 2009 that government cannot spend its way out of a recession, this week joined a unanimous Senate majority that approved what he described as “the biggest government intervention in the economy in the history of the world.”
“This is a response to an invasion,” he told reporters. “This is the kind of thing you’d have to do if we were at war.”
Like other conservatives, he noted that much of the nation’s current economic distress was caused by the government’s social distancing orders, while the Obama stimulus was in response to a crisis created by the private sector.
Failing to take dramatic action now, Toomey said, “would be a wildly imprudent thing, and it would probably result in such a severe recession - it might very well be a depression - and it could take decades to come out of this.”
Even before the health crisis struck, the Republican-aligned fiscal conservative movement had dramatically diminished under Trump.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
We are so screwed.
This bill was never intended to bail out individual Americans. It was never intended to bail out American companies, either.
Its primary purpose is to stabilize the value of the U.S. dollar as a global reserve currency.
I’m not a big fan of Pat Toomey, but this explains why he was right in 2009 and will probably be vindicated as right in 2020 even though he took positions that seem to be 180 degrees apart.
This is not a “stimulus” bill. It’s a STABILIZATION bill.
Idiots.
Like Socialism itself, Keynesian economics (”government spending ‘stimulates’ the economy”) has long since been debunked, but like socialism keeps getting dug up and walks around like the walking dead.
Don’t you notice almost no opposition from the Left on this??? That should tell you a lot right there. The Left LOVES the walking dead. They are all about death.
We DON’T need more government (”stimulus spending”). We need MUCH LESS government.TAX CUTS and CUTS IN GOVERNMENT SIZE.
Then you’ll have the fight of your life from the Left because THAT will truly launch the economy into the stratosphere and strengthen America economically — exactly what the Left doesn’t want becsue the Left hates America.
This is a very sad thing here. Political expediency at the cost of true recovery. And Trump participating in it. Very sad.
How do we recover form this stupidity? Only one way.
CUT TAXES AND CUT GOVERNMENT!
THAT is where the battle is but it is the good fight of faith and freedom.
The 2008 fiasco was due to companies and bad business policies. My stock never recovered because of the interest rates.
They all believe to never left a crisis go to waste.
JoMa
We are so screwed.
Come on. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of our endless wars in the Middle East.
The article says conservatives in Congress are normally “deficit hawks”. But somehow they never are concerned about the trillions spent IJ Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.
If money is no object when it comes to launching foreign wars, there should be no problem with spending money to help out Americans at home
How would one “End the Fed” without disturbing the natives? First you have to get government control of the Fed. Check. Enjoy the show.
We’re all socialists now.
Meanwhile, some FReepers continue to whine.
Unable or unwilling to see the larger picture they drag out their archaic dogma and whine, whine, whine
The two are inseperable. both are different sides of the same deep-state coin.
And, I should add, the economics of faith and freedom is the economics of Adam Smith’s, “Wealth of Nations” - freedom in action.
The answer to the Keynesian hoax was understood long before Keynesian economics hit the fan - the market economy free from government interference: THE FREE MARKET ECONOMY- THE CREATOR OF WEALTH IN AND AMONG NATIONS.
I think I owe you a lot of credit ... because I believe you are the Freeper who pointed that out to me a couple of years ago and completely changed my outlook on a lot of these matters related to government spending.
Mitch McConnell said it 100 times. Not a stimulus bill
US Government spending lowers the value of the dollar.
The EU generally has 60% debt/GDP limit to keep the Euro strong.
Folks,
Lets get real here. Maybe a story will help.
You are Indiana Jones and the walls are closing in on you. You look all over and there is no escape.
Finally you look down and see two pools of cess. One says 5 feet deep, the other 30. You do know what cess is, right?
You jump in the 5 foot deep one, crouch down, the wall moves over you . You get out on the other side and say, “WHAT A SHITTY SITUATION THIS IS!)
Good. We should throw what we can at this virus to end this.
We spend about $700 billion a year on the military in war and in peace.
Military spending is mostly pork.
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