The Congress has just passed the largest spending bill in our history. Let’s see what we get for our money, yes our money. However, I must digress to make sure we must understand how this system works. The basic premise is that if you borrow money, you have to pay it back. If you do not pay it back, someone who holds your collateral will call the debt. If you can’t pay it back the collateral is sized. OK, now that we have established the ground rules, we need to examine who is the borrower; who is the lender; who are the guarantors; how is this loan going to be repaid.
Who is the borrower? This one is fairly simple; it is the United States Congress and the President of the United States. Just as an aside, what are they borrowing money for? The stated purpose of the loan is to revitalize the United States economy and get people working again. Therefore, we need to examine the loan document to see where the money is going to be spent. Since the loan papers exceed 800 pages, I am not going to try to enumerate the whole package but rather give some representative examples.
$88 million to move the Public Health Service into a new building (what happened to Two Men and A Truck?)
$34 million to renovate the Department of Commerce headquarters
$1 BILLION (yes with a B) for the Census Bureau (which is now going to fall directly under the president’s chief-of-staff)
$89 BILLION for Medicaid
$2.4 BILLION for “neighborhood stabilization” activities (read ACORN bailout/beef-up)
1.2 BILLION for a summer youth program
36 BILLION to expand unemployment (don’t we already have enough people out of work?)
Ok, you should get the picture by now. This short list of just over $130 BILLION shows me no examples of getting our economy out of the doldrums and putting people back to work. Instead, it shows me a gross expansion of our government “nanny state” mentality, Keynesian economics at its absolute worse (but I think that is redundant).
Who is the lender? That is fairly easy when you examine who is buying all of our paper. It is mostly being bought by foreign entities that do not necessarily have the United States’ best interest at heart; in other words, potential enemies such as the Peoples’ Republic of China, and Saudi Arabia. These are not benevolent regimes. At some point they are going to call the note and force the United States to “pony-up the cash.” What has President Obama promised these folks? What sweet deals has he promised for these loans? Or is he so inept and naïve as to think these lenders are just out for our benefit?
Who are the guarantors of this loan and how is it going to be repaid? That one is easy too. The guarantors are you, me, our children, our grandchildren, and their grandchildren. The obligations that this congress and administration have made exceed the GDP of the United States for decades to come. All of this money can be paid back in 10 or 20 years if the federal government stops spending at the end of 2009 and only pays back the loan (yup, that is going to happen). Our federal government is worse than a herd of pigs that have just come off a 10 mile hike and discovered a new slop trough. They have the arrogance to believe that we are stupid and will never understand that this program is part of the president’s plan for redistribution of wealth. It is his plan to punish individualism, entrepreneurship, and initiative.
My question is “Where is the outrage, where is the righteous indignation from those rugged American individualists?” We hear from bloggers and Conservative commentators about how bad this “Stimulus Package” is for America but where is the indignation coming from our congressmen and senators? We see unanimous negative votes from Republican congressmen, and that is laudable, but where is the screaming and shouting from the highest buildings across this land calling for a popular campaign against this federal government gorging?
The only way we are going to take back our country is for grassroots organizations such as the Coalition for a Conservative Majority to grow and work from the bottom up to change the mindset that has become prevalent in Washington. If the average citizen does not stand up for our rights then we will get what we deserve.
I urge everyone reading this to pass it along and go to www.ccmajority.org to see what you can do.
Daniel C. Lanotte
As always I welcome your comments and discussion.
Crossposted at: http://VoiceoftheRockies.blogs…
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To understand why we think the GOP has no clue about what would be effective now, take a look at this post.
Listen to these guys
Sound familiar? Well that was from 1993 when the Giant Obstructionist Party did everything they could to oppose President Clinton’s agenda.
New rethuglicans, same broken record. And you know what? The American people are buying the crap that the rethugs are shoveling this time around.
They won a bunch of elections the next time around.
Of course, back then people had not just recovered from the nightmare of Republicans in Congress for a dozen years (except for a brief interlude in the Senate, I think Democrats had controlled both houses of Congress for over 40 years before 1994).
If Republicans are seriously running on their belief that everyone’s just forgotten how truly awful they are at governing, then they’re truly awful at campaigning too.
with this president when we go in debt the money is spent on Americans….
when they not only sat by while GWB inflated the national debt to Jupiter-size, but voted for his inane budgets.
Really, any ‘pub who supported Bush and is now screaming about Obama has absolutely no shame, no morals, no sense.
Republicans didn’t just sit by, they were all complicit, grabbing pork hand over fist while thumbing their nose at the economic principles they espoused. That’s one reason John McCain earned the ire of fellow Republicans, because he called them on it (to little effect). Let’s just be clear here, this was a party-wide drunken spending spree. Bush was hardly the leader on this, he went along for the ride.
Otherwise, what Ari said …
Are you actually making the “They did it so it excuses us” argument?
If not, just what is your excuse for this abomination called the stimulus bill. It defies every fiscally responsible principle either party has had in the last 30 years.
No it’s not perfect, no bill is. But it’s amazingly clean and focused on the job at hand. As to will it work, no one knows for sure. But they are placing strong bets on the most likely winners.
The biggest (in terms of dollars) boondogle in it is the tax cuts as they have been shown to be a very ineffective response. But politically they were necessary to try and bring along the Republicans.
The beauty of the spending in this bill, unlike the drunken orgy of Bush’s spending, is that after it is over we will have all these improvements in our country. And that will give the economy a gigantic boost.
… so I don’t know if you meant it for me, Dave, RG, sxp, Arvadonian or GB.
… so I don’t know if you meant it for me, Dave, RG, sxp, Arvadonian or GB.
Debt.
Your debt was on defense spending and tax cuts for the rich, our debt is reinvestment in our own country through spending, and the biggest middle class tax cut in history.
The plurality of the money is being spent on tax cuts.
Our differences are idealogical–and there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem is that many on the right prefer to fall back on rhetoric.
I agree with you that “You did it, so we can” is a bad argument for the President’s stimulus, but it’s a valid complaint about the GOP. Where was all this indignation over the last eight years? The Republicans were the kings of pork for eight years.
Like I said, I think that accusing us of racking up debt is hypocritical because both parties will create debt. The differences lie in how that debt will be incurred.
Obviously we’re not going to agree on this, but I appreciate you trying to have a dialog with us, and I’m glad you’re back.