Regarding the Democrats' trillion-dollar, non-stimulus "stimulus" bill...
- Generational Theft. The final agreement will cost each and every household more than $9,400 in additional debt (including interest on the bill), paid for by our children and grandchildren.
- Paltry Tax Relief for Working Families and Small Businesses. The “Making Work Pay” tax credit at the center of the plan amounts to $1.10 a day, not even enough to ride the bus one-way to work.
- Massive Government Expansion. The final agreement is almost as much as the annual discretionary budget for the entire federal government.
- A Trillion-Dollar Spending Bill. The $789.5 billion final agreement slated for a House vote either today or tomorrow will exceed more than $1 trillion when adding in the interest of approximately $300 billion between 2009-2019.
- Unnecessary Spending That Won’t Create Jobs. Apparently included in the final “jobs” bill is money for plug-in vehicles, money for STD prevention, and money for ACORN (via the Neighborhood Stabilization Program and CDBG program). The final agreement also creates new programs and funds existing programs that can be used to fund earmarks and pork-barrel projects.
Continue reading "10 'stimulus' facts you won't hear from CNN" »
Here’s what editorials and opinion makers are saying about the Democrats’ bloated “stimulus” bill:
“Stimulating welfare,” Rocky Mountain News:
Several provisions in the stimulus package would immediately grow the welfare state. One would make Medicaid, the federal health program for the indigent, available to anyone who’s unemployed - former millionaire CEOs and laid-off retail workers alike. Another measure would, for the first time, provide taxpayer subsidies under the COBRA health-insurance law. Either of these proposals would undermine individual responsibility, allowing people who can afford to pay for medical insurance from their own pockets to collect taxpayer subsidies.
“Mission Creep,” The Chicago Tribune:
We’ve been skeptical about this whole process. The mantra on this page has been that if the U.S. has to do this, the spending has to be timely, targeted and temporary. In other words, try to jump-start the economy, but don’t let the rush to a “stimulus” package become the smoke to hide a lot of ways to permanently expand government.
“The President must improve stimulus legislation to get the biggest bang for America’s buck,” New York Daily News:
The spree extended to paying for a campaign against sexually transmitted diseases, for efforts to help smokers quit, for the Coast Guard to design an icebreaker, as well as for many more things having nothing to do with stimulating the economy.
It was probably too much to hope that Pelosi, Obey & Co. would behave as anything other than entrenched Beltway insiders - even with the nation’s fate in the balance.
Continue reading "Nationwide smackdown for Democrat non-stimulus plan" »