So the White House has apparently been in negotiations with GOP moderates in the senate to try to get their votes to pass the stimulus
bill. The stimulus bill is now down to $790 billion, which is still an ass ton of money. I've heard a lot of debate on this bill
about whether it's good or bad, and a lot of silly name calling by both parties. I need to ask the question, though: How many people
that are debating this have actually read the bill? When it was still $900 billion, the bill was 258 pages long. That's right,
I tried to read the entire thing. I only made it through about 20 or 30 pages, but I'm sure that's more than most people out
there talking about it, and it was enough for me to know that this thing is full of pork.
First of all, near the beginning they appropriate about $300-400 million dollars to make sure that the other $899.7 billion dollars
is spent how it's supposed to be. I understand that as a percentage that's not a lot, but how much does it really cost to make sure our
government isn't totally corrupt? The numbers also weren't broken down well enough. I don't really understand what $1.2 billion can do, and
I'm sure the people voting on this don't either. Maybe it costs $1.2 billion upgrade agricultural industries with computers and such (Don't
remember the exact number), but maybe it doesn't. It would be nice to see how they came up with that figure, instead of just assuming
that all of these dollar amounts were pulled out of the aether.
There's also $1 billion going to the Bureau of the Census. How the fuck is that supposed to help the economy? The bill doesn't actually
say that, it just says "Here's a billion dollars with no explanation of why or how to spend it". Wow, now I can afford to pay
my college loans!
There are some provisions in here that will generate jobs, but these are also very temporary contracting jobs that will be over in a year
or two, which doesn't really help. That's not really going to help either, it will just temporarily stop the hemorrhaging. For
the economy to get better, people need to start spending money. In order for people to spend money, they need to feel confident.
If the media keeps harping on how bad the economy is, that's only going to make things worse. The stimulus bill also has a one time $400
tax credit (Knocked down from $500) per person, as if that's supposed to help. We JUST did this with Bush when we got tax rebates.
Guess what? It didn't work then, so just because the president is a Democrat doesn't mean it's suddenly going to work now. The problem
with this rebates is that they're a one time thing, and everyone knows it. People aren't going to go out and splurge with this money,
because they know they aren't getting more. Last time we got these I used it to pay bills, and that's the same thing will happen now.
To help the economy, people need to have a steady supply of more money than they have now. You know how we can make that happen?
Instead of spending money we don't even have with this stimulus bill, just cut taxes. People will be taking home more money, and will
know that that increase is there to stay, and thusly they can spend more. Maybe it won't work right away, but it has a better chance
in the long run than spending $790 that we don't even have.
Nothing says healthy economy like massive deficit spending!
© 2009 by Dr. Jeebus