Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Obama wins House passage of economic stimulus
Obama passed his $825billion economic stimulus package by a 244-188 vote in the House. All Republicans and 11 Democrats refused to support the bill. The Republicans believe that the bill spends too much money with not enough tax cuts. Obama commented that "we can't do is drag our feet or allow the same partisan differences to get in our way. We must move swiftly and boldly to put Americans back to work, and that is exactly what this plan begins to do." Meanwhile a similar bill is expected to pass in the Senate and both House and Senate will have to work on the bill to resolve the differences. Even though the second bill also has Republicans worried, both sides have agreed to talk to each other.
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3 comments:
"The Republicans believe that the bill spends too much money with not enough tax cuts."
I had to read that sentence a few times to make sure I read that right. It's not a typo, it's a very accurate description of the Republican's stance, but boy is it backwards logic.
Here's how a normal person would complain about the stimulus if they didn't like its amount of spending: "The bill spends too much money with not enough tax raises to offset the spending." I mean, never mind that our own government has already been in a deficit of never-before-seen proportions for years now, but how about lets cut even more of its revenue! Oh, and I'm sure that the tax cuts they want will go to the rich, right? It's the same mentality that is crumbling California's state legislature as well.
Even with that aside, tax cuts and "stimulus checks" are not going to flow money back into the economy. If I'm deep in credit card debt and worried about losing my mortgage and I'm handed a tax rebate check or a stimulus check, am I going to go spend it on a nice dinner or buy some new gadgets so that I can flow money back into the economy? No! I'm going to use it to help pay the mortgage and my credit cards! And that sure doesn't help keep people from being laid off, does it?
I'm very glad that the stimulus package has passed the House and am very hopeful that it will make it's away to Obama's desk for his signature. It allocates money for many social services, especially public education. California alone stands to gain about $10 billion in education funding if this thing goes through, which will be a blessing for us in the midst of our own state's economic crisis.
All I can hope is that Barack Obama doesn't continue this nonsense about bipartisanship for much longer. Bipartisanship works when you're getting intelligent reactions from both sides, but the reactions from Republicans during the past week has shown that they're going to be anything but. Obama was the first Democrat since JFK to get more than 51% of the popular vote. That means that he has a mandate to accomplish significant change in our government, and as much as he hates to say it out loud, bipartisanship is not going to take him very far once his honeymoon period ends.
Correction to my previous comment: Obama is the first Democrat since Lyndon Johnson (in 1964) to get more than 51% of the vote, not JFK.
Douglas by your logic the government should not increase spending at all. As you said the defecit and national debt are at ridiculous levels.
Funnily enough, tax cuts could actually "stimulate" (not sure if that's really the right word) the economy. Tax cuts would mean there is more money being allocated efficiently by the free market. That's money that would have been spent inefficiently by the government (after passing through a bazillion different bureaucrats).
The point is that you have to ask where does the money for this stimulus package come from? Well it is supposed to come from the taxpayers, but not all of it is since there is a huge budget defecit. This would be backwards anyway because you could just cut taxes and let the free market allocate the dollars. The government can only redistribute this wealth, and this redistribution is less efficient than the market.
So the money comes either from inflating the money supply or borrowing from foreign countries, pushing us further into debt.
Basically the government needs to cut spending, and let the free market sort out the resources.
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