The Congressional Plan To Lengthen The Recession

This week the House of Representatives passed the latest, pork laden “stimulus” package that will cost a little more than $800 billion. The bill, written entirely by congressional Democrats, passed with no Republicans voting for the measure. The Republican opposition to the bill stemmed from the inclusion of billions of dollars in earmarks and pork projects that have absolutely nothing to do with stimulating the economy. For example, there is about $75 million for smoking cessation programs. Aren’t we going to need more people smoking, and paying cigarette taxes, to pay for this massive spending bill?

For most of Americans, the sheer size of an $800 billion spending bill is beyond our understanding. Let’s put it into terms that we can understand a bit easier. The government could send every household with children under the age of 18 a check for $22,445 and that would be equal to what they are proposing to spend on this “stimulus” bill. If we expanded to every family in the U.S., each family would receive a check for $10,520. How much would the economy be affected if they sent the taxpayers a check, instead of sending billions to their cronies?

Republicans are not the only ones raising serious questions about this farce known as a stimulus package. The Congressional Budget Office has weighed in with their analysis, and have questioned why we need to rush to pass this bill, when more than 75% of the spending takes place in 2010 and beyond. If this bill is so desperately needed to pull us out of the economic doldrums, why is the majority of the money being spent in the future and not now? Could it be that they know that this package will have a zero effect on turning the economy around? The President claims that this proposal will create as many as 4 million jobs, but if you do the math those 4 million jobs will cost the taxpayers more than $206,000 each.

Last year about this time, Congress and the Bush administration decided to send us all “stimulus” checks that cost the taxpayers about $325 million. That plan provided a small blip on the economic radar, but it was not enough to stave off the economic downturn. Then in the early fall congressional leaders pontificated about how hard they were working to save our economy. They then passed a $700 billion bailout of the financial markets. The net effect of that bailout was that the markets continued to tank. After several smaller bailouts, Congress has decided that printing more money and throwing it at a problem will fix the economy. So with a sagging economy and uncertainty on the horizon, Congress has decided that spending nearly a trillion dollars of money we don’t have on projects that we don’t need will fix the problem. This proposal will cause all of our taxes to go up, because they simply cannot afford to throw money up in the air without a way to pay for it. To steal a famous line from the campaign, “you can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.” The proposal has so much pork hidden throughout it, it can only be labeled a pig.