Great article by Hans Bader in the Examiner.
Excerpt:
President Obama now wants Congress to spend $50 billion to keep state governments from laying off their employees. In essence, this is a bailout for the state-government-employee unions that bankroll liberal politicians. Earlier, Obama’s allies in Congress proposed spending billions to bail out mismanaged and underfunded union pension funds.
The state governments will never have to pay back any of this bailout money, which rewards them for irresponsibly increasing their employees’ pay much faster than inflation, to levels much higher than in the private sector.
By contrast, the private banks that were bailed out have repaid most of the money they received, while their shareholders lost most of their money–92.6 percent at Citibank.
While millions of private sector employees have been laid off in the current recession, few government employees have been.
[…]Obama has not hidden his bias towards these powerful unions. As he noted in a 2006 book, “I owe those unions. . .When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away. I don’t mind feeling obligated.”
How wisely is government money spent, anyway?
$700,000 for research on jokes. (H/T The Blog Prof)
It reminds me of this Monty Python sketch:
This is why the unemployment rate has gone UP with all of this stimulus spending. Government isn’t as efficient at creating jobs as private businesses… government wastes money because it’s not their money. They have nothing to gain by being efficient, but private businesses have to be efficient.
Bader’s article is worth reading in full because it explains in detail how the Democrats caused the mortgage crisis.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
I think you forgot about the Trillions that the republicans spent on their “stimulus” – the Bush tax cuts and the approximately 36 billion+ that they want to spend extending it another year.
Even David Stockman, Reagan’s legendary economic architect said our debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/opinion/01stockman.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
Even Greenspan, the man who helped sell Bush Jr’s tax cut stated that they were simply “disastrous.”
Bush’s tax cut extravaganza for the wealthy accounted for almost half the budget deficits during his presidency http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/001914.htm
Am I saying I’m for Obama’s plan – I haven’t heard much about it yet, so I’ll have to wait before passing judgment.
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Make sure you put a “y” at the end of your name.
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/08/06/heritage-in-focus-the-bush-tax-cuts-and-the-deficit-myth/
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/08/04/the-truth-about-the-2001-2003-tax-cuts/
It’s a good topic though. I might write it up.
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Sorry about that – a new computer so the cookies weren’t setup yet!
I followed the first two links and I do have to admonish you – they are poor at best. The first one was so weak on details as to be almost criminal. My second link provides an abundance of links that prove the point. I would like to know why/how he believes that removing a huge source of tax revenues (without cutting spending or increasing tax revenue in a different manner) wouldn’t cause deficits. His only reasoning must follow something like: it was the lack of growth, not the fall in income tax revenue…which would also mean then that the tax cuts definitely didn’t stimulate the economy in the manner anticipated (actually, at all).
the second link discussed who benefited the most from the tax cuts and it is all pure speculation. Post WWII through Reagan’s tax slashing our country grew in leaps and bounds, all under the pressure of immense tax burdens. Meaning that high taxes don’t burden growth in the manner that the GOP loves to claim. Cutting taxes isn’t going to spur growth while our economic house is in such disorder.
I think one thing that has become increasingly clear in the last 9 or so years is that if you laid all the economists in the world end to end, they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion (not my joke, but I like it)
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I’ll turn this into a post and we can fight it out! I’ll put your name in the title!
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Sounds great! Just let me know when it’s posted
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It’s scheduled for 6 PM today. I wrote it last night nothing major. You know I am still crushed by that other girl-related thing.
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Jerry, the Democrats took control of the House and Senate in January of 2007. What was the budget deficit in 2007, the last year that was owned by the Republicans? And then tell me the deficit in 2009 and 2010.
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Excessive debt is a great way for socialist-minded governments to accrue power. It provides an urgent pretext for seizing additional control over the economy and people’s lives. The only way for the US to pull out of this political/social slide into entrenched permanent entitlement-based socialism is to get its debt under control. $50,000,000,000 more debt is a move in the wrong direction. Not sure if the socialist democrats are doing this intentionally or not, but at some point they’ll wake up and realize what a golden opportunity a debt crisis affords.
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