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Obama blasts private jet tax breaks created by his own stimulus

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From the Heritage Foundation, my favorite think tank.

Excerpt:

The chief economic culprit of President Obama’s Wednesday press conference was undoubtedly “corporate jets.” He mentioned them on at least six occasions, each time offering their owners as an example of a group that should be paying more in taxes.

“I think it’s only fair to ask an oil company or a corporate jet owner that has done so well,” the president stated at one point, “to give up that tax break that no other business enjoys.”

But the corporate jet tax break to which Obama was referring – called “accelerated depreciation,” and a popular Democratic foil of late – was created by his own stimulus package.

Proponents of the tax break lauded it as a means to spur economic activity by encouraging purchases of large manufactured goods (planes). So the president’s statement today – and his call to repeal that tax break generally – is either a tacit admission that the stimulus included projects that did not, in fact, stimulate the economy, or an attempt to “soak the rich” without regard for the policy’s effects on the economy.

For many Americans, those effects could be dramatic. Cessna and Gulfstream have facilities in a combined 15 cities nationwide (and another four abroad). A significant decline in consumption of private jets would undoubtedly have adverse effects on at least some of those local economies. Given the sizable bump in consumption that the initial tax break yielded, its repeal would likely have that economic domino effect.

Rightly or wrongly, any increase in the taxes paid by any US-based business is going to result in higher prices for consumers, or layoffs, or both. Even talking badly about businesses causes them to feel uncertain about the future. And when businesses are uncertain, they don’t hire people and they don’t expand. Obama’s solution to the recession created by the Democrat housing policies was to take money from the private sector and blow it on the public sector. Private companies realize that the bill is going to come due soon, and they are sitting on their money in case Obama succeeds in his plan to raise taxes on businesses.

 

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Obama spent $80 billion dollars on green jobs so where are the jobs?

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Government Spending Vs Jobs
Government Spending Vs Jobs

From left-wing Politico, an evaluation of Barack Obama’s green jobs stimulus spending.

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama heads to an energy plant in North Carolina on Monday to talk once again about the job-creating power of a green economy.

The catch? Nearly three years into Obama’s presidency, the White House can’t point to much solid evidence that significant numbers of Americans are scoring the green jobs the president has been touting.

Monthly Labor Department employment reports say nothing about the new clean energy workforce, while an effort to document how many Americans actually make a living in the “green collar” field may not be done by November 2012.

Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers suggests 225,000 clean energy jobs were either created or preserved through the third quarter of 2010 thanks to more than $80 billion in the economic stimulus package. But those are estimates at best.

White House officials say asking about the connection between the 9.1 percent unemployment rate and the administration’s concerted green jobs campaign is the wrong question.

And we should not have tried this, because Spain tried spending money on green jobs and it raised unemployment.

Excerpt:

Pajamas Media has received a leaked internal assessment produced by Spain’s Zapatero administration. The assessment confirms the key charges previously made by non-governmental Spanish experts in a damning report exposing the catastrophic economic failure of Spain’s “green economy” initiatives.

[…]Unsurprisingly for a governmental take on a flagship program, the report takes pains to minimize the extent of the economic harm. Yet despite the soft-pedaling, the document reveals exactly why electricity rates “necessarily skyrocketed” in Spain, as did the public debt needed to underwrite the disaster. This internal assessment preceded the Zapatero administration’s recent acknowledgement that the “green economy” stunt must be abandoned, lest the experiment risk Spain becoming Greece.

The government report does not expressly confirm the highest-profile finding of the non-governmental report: that Spain’s “green economy” program cost the country 2.2 jobs for every job “created” by the state. However, the figures published in the government document indicate they arrived at a job-loss number even worse than the 2.2 figure from the independent study.

Green jobs programs don’t work. They haven’t worked anywhere.

Does Obama look around the world and evaluate what policies work and what policies don’t work? Or does he just decide how to spend private sector money based on what makes him feel good, and what makes him look good? Is that what being President is about? Wasting tons of taxpayer money and bankrupting the country so that you can feel good about yourself because people think you are doing something good?

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Democrats want MORE wasteful stimulus spending and HIGHER taxes

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The Hill reports that some Democrats want to waste even more money on “stimulus” wealth redistribution. (H/T Marathon Pundit)

Excerpt:

Senior Senate Democrats are growing frustrated by what they see as President Obama’s passivity on the economy, and are beginning to discuss a large infrastructure package funded by tax increases.

Some Democrats, such as Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who serves as chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, think such a package could lower the unemployment rate by as much as two percentage points.

[…]“I am concerned about the Obama administration’s approach on this,” Harkin said. “It always has been about jobs. I think the administration kind of got snookered talking about the deficit and the debt after the last election.

“The last election was about jobs and the economy, and now we’re in a position where we really do need some economic pump-priming by the federal government,” he said.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, endorsed Harkin’s argument for more infrastructure spending, and said it is gaining support in the broader caucus.

“There’s very broad support,” Rockefeller said. “There’s no other way to get at this problem.”

Rockefeller said a spending package was discussed at several meetings Wednesday and that there’s a recognition Democrats need to be tougher in negotiations with Republicans.

“We have to be much more aggressive about all this, because as soon as they say ‘We’re not going to do that,’ as they’ve been saying for so long about so many things, you just kind of say ‘oh.’ We’ve got to stop saying ‘oh,’ ” he said, referring to the hard line Republicans have taken for Medicare cuts and against tax increases.

Even centrists like Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) say a major infrastructure package funded by tax revenue-generating measures is what’s needed to strengthen the economy.

Here’s how well the stimulus spending has been working so far to create jobs:

Obama Unemployment Stimulus Graph
Obama Unemployment Stimulus Graph

And more:

Government Spending Vs Jobs

It’s not working! And they want more of this.