Tag Archives: Budget

News

Democrat Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says we may need another massive stimulus

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Budget Deficit
Budget Deficit

The first two spending bills didn’t work, so we just need to keep trying harder to spend our way out of debt!

Check out this story from Reuters. (H/T Gateway Pundit)

Excerpt:

U.S. leaders should be open to the possibility of a second stimulus package to jolt the economy out of a recession still causing job losses, House of Representatives Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said on Tuesday.

…President Barack Obama led the charge for a two-year $787 billion stimulus package that his fellow Democrats who control Congress pushed through the House and Senate in February and he has argued it would help create or save up to 4 million jobs.

Create 4 million jobs? He’s lost 2.5 million jobs so far. Maybe he doesn’t know what the word create means?

foundry_recovery_plan_full

Michelle Malkin lists a few more of the Democrats in favor of more government spending.

Excerpt:

As you all have heard, Laura D’Andrea Tyson, the Clinton economic adviser now on Team Obama, has floated a second stimulus plan. Democrat Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island has echoed the call. Other Democrats are open to it.

Only 10 percent of Porkulus One has been spent, misspent, or gone untracked, but who’s counting?

I’ve uploaded two documents for your perusal this morning: The first is a GAO report on stimulus spending by states and localities, which will be released this morning at a House oversight hearing.

You can read the whole thing here.

Bottom line: The funds are not being spent on what they’re supposed to be spent on. States made up their own criteria for spending. School and transportation bureaucrats preserved their own jobs instead of “stimulating” others.

The second document is a GOP memo dissecting the failures of Porkulus One.

You can read the whole thing here.

Michelle lists a few of the key findings from the second document.

National Debt
National Debt

Why didn’t the massive Democrat spending spree work?

This is lesson one of Economics 101. When government spends money, the money comes out of the private sector. Government is not even close to allocating capital and producing wealth as efficiently as the free market system.

Ed Morrissey explains:

Here’s where we get into the “saved or created” dodge of the Obama administration.  The Porkulus money may have “saved” jobs, but they were government jobs, not the private sector.  Most government employees have union representation, primarily by the SEIU.  The only jobs Porkulus may have saved were those of bureaucrats in state government, and mostly to make sure the unions stay on the side of the Democrats.

None of that money went into promoting growth in the private sector, which is why unemployment skyrocketed.  Capital stayed out of the market, in part because of fears of confiscatory tax increases and in part because of the amount of regulation threatened by the Obama administration, and what capital was left will get eaten up by the cost of Porkulus eventually.  And the GAO says it will take months just to get effective reporting on how that money gets spent, regardless of where it goes.

Obama’s support is now virtually 50-50 according to Rasmussen Reports.But he won’t care, because he’s the Obamessiah! As long as the left-wing fascists and terrorists love him, who cares what economically-literate peons like us think?

Commentary

Understanding what cap-and-trade actually does

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I thought I would put together a few snippets to help everyone understand what Obama’s cap-and-trade energy tax actually does.

It’s a massive government intervention in the free market

The Heritage Foundation explains the point of cap and trade.

One of the most contentious provisions in the bill is the use of offsets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, in which “a manufacturing plant in, say, Gary, Ind., that is exceeding its ‘permitted’ expulsion of CO2, could continue to commit this sin against humanity by paying for a Brazilian farmer to plant some trees in the rain forest…. Of course, to guard against some nefarious polluter trying to cheat Uncle Sam and the world by claiming bogus ‘offsets,’ here must be a monitoring mechanism. Enter the ‘Offsets Integrity Advisory Board’ — yet another group of scientific ‘experts’ that would be tasked with compiling a list of qualifying offsets around the globe.”

Cap and trade is a regulatory nightmare that would hand over more power and money to the government with the intention of reducing global temperatures. The problem with that, however, is the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill will only reduce temperatures by an amount almost too small to measure. The bigger problem is that consumers’ pocketbooks will be hit hard by this bill. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis found that by 2035, gasoline prices would increase 58 percent, natural gas prices would increase 55 percent, home heating oil would increase 56 percent, and worst of all, electricity prices would jump 90 percent. After all, the goal of cap and trade is to drive up energy prices so high that people will use less. Yet in Missouri, state legislators are considering a bill that would charge consumers for saving electricity.

That’s enough to scare the snark out of you, but there’s much more to it than that.

The bill provides opportunities for corruption

Consider this National Review Online post, which counts 50 reasons why cap-and-trade is bad. (H/T Club for Growth)

I cannot excerpt the 50 points. I read through them and each one is more horrible than the last. Any of the 50 would be sufficient to cause an honest man to cry like a baby. (The print version of the article is easier to read – please send it to all your friends, too!)

The Democrats didn’t even read the bill

And remember, none of the Democrats who voted for the energy tax actually read it.

Excerpt:

Recall the passing of Waxman-Markey by the House, which had 300 pages added 18 hours before the floor vote–almost certainly going unread by most members of Congress. Furthermore, the nonplussed responses from administration backers and Democrats in Congress–when pressed to read the legislation they vote on or support–should be infuriating to anyone in favor of transparency and responsibility in government. As CEI Adjunct Fellow Fran Smith noted, some on the left went as far to claim that members of Congress uncomfortable with voting for climate change legislation in the dark were guilty of “treason against the planet.”

Yes, there’s that vaunted leftist morality again. Cutting missile defense is good, but not passing an energy tax is treason.

News

California Democrat leader says free speech is terrorism

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Speaking out against tax increases is terrorism!
Speaking out against my tax increases is terrorism! Give me your money, and shut up!

Stop the ACLU links to this LA Times interview with California Speaker of the House Karen Bass. As you know, California is in the worst financial crisis in all 50 states. Karen is very angry that Republicans are pressured by voters to vote against tax increases. She thinks that Republicans should vote like Democrats, regardless of what their constituents want.

Excerpt:

How do you think conservative talk radio has affected the Legislature’s work?

The Republicans were essentially threatened and terrorized against voting for revenue. Now [some] are facing recalls. They operate under a terrorist threat: “You vote for revenue and your career is over.” I don’t know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist. I guess it’s about free speech, but it’s extremely unfair.

See, California is running a 24.3 BILLION dollar deficit, which is half the deficit that Canada is running this year. It’s so bad that they are issuing IOUs to contractors. And the Democrats think that tax hikes are the answer. By the way, her background is “community organizing” as well.

Hot Air has more here:

There’s a lot of stupidity and tyranny locked into those few words.  The First Amendment guarantees the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, even apart from the “free speech” issues Bass casually discards.  Elected politicians are accountable to the people who elect them in a free society.  Politicians do not acquire lordly status when they go to the Assembly, or anywhere else.

Usually, politicians are smart enough to at least pay lip service to getting feedback from their constituents.  Instead, Bass calls them “terrorists” for … what?  Calling their representatives and telling them not to raise taxes even higher, in the state with the sixth-highest per capita tax burden in the nation?  Expressing their opinions?  Telling politicians they won’t get their support if they vote for a tax hike?  That’s democracy, not terrorism, although I’m hardly surprised that Bass can’t tell the difference.

…Beware the politicians who consider dissent terrorism.  They’re either idiotic beyond belief, or tyrants waiting for an opportunity.  Bass might just be both.

Remember when dissent was the highest form of patriotism? Yeah, now dissent makes you a terrorist. This is what secularism and socialism amounts to: disagree with me and you’re the worst person in the world and anything I do to you is morally justified.

There is no difference between communists in North Korea and communists is the United States. They believe the same things. They are just on different stages of the same road to serfdom.