Tag Archives: Stimulus

Videos

Bobby Jindal defends Rush Limbaugh against hostile Larry King

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Hot Air has the video of Jindal kicking butt on Larry King Live. It’s more fun to watch when the left is angry and crazy.

Here’s Hot Air’s blurb about the video:

Bobby Jindal faced off against an unusually hostile Larry King last night over the Steele-Limbaugh contretemps. King kept trying to stuff words into Jindal’s mouth, and Jindal politely but firmly kept spitting them back at King.  King insists that Republicans want the country to fail when it’s clear that not even Rush says that.

CNN has the full transcript! Here’s the best part:

KING: Governor, do you think people are thinking about capitalism now or are they thinking about problems?

JINDAL: Look, clearly, the American people are worried about paying their mortgages, keeping their jobs and paying their health care bills. I think Rush is a great leader for conservatives. I think he articulates what a lot of people are concerned about. And I think it is absolutely true that you can help people keep their jobs, help people afford their health care, help people afford their homes without abandoning the same conservative principles.  For example, Republicans offered ideas like aggressive tax credits to make homes more affordable so people can refinance, can stay in their homes. You’d see more demand for homes. They’ve offered ideas about — instead of nationalizing banks, why not modify the mark to market rules? …

KING: Do you want him to fail?

JINDAL: I want the — I don’t want those policies to be adopted. I want my country to succeed, but I don’t want policies to be adopted that I think –

KING: But what if the… policies actually work?  What if they work?

JINDAL: This is where we have a fundamental disagreement. I don’t think it’s going work to borrow half a — to spend in excess of our revenues.  If you believed everything that the president — if you believed all of his projections, if you believe the economy starts growing again, you believe that we’re not going be spending all that money fighting overseas…if you believe that all of these temporary programs are truly temporary, he’s still projecting deficits of half a trillion dollars per year, under the best case scenario.  Larry, that’s just not sustainable. We cannot continue to do this as a country. China cannot become — continue to be our largest foreign holders of debt. This addiction to debt is what’s caused so many of our problems. The government is not going to be the answer to every problem.  I want my country to succeed. But what I worry about is that simply spending money on new programs — look at every new bailout. You know, you talked today, you know, about the auto bailouts. Then you had the fourth, I think it’s the fourth — it’s hard to keep track — the AIG bailout today. It seems like every time you turn around, there’s another trillion dollar trillion plan. … I’ve yet to hear a coherent exit plan.

KING: So you hope — you hope it doesn’t hurt?

JINDAL: No. I hope that failed policies don’t get adopted. I want my country to succeed. I want the economy to grow. I want — certainly I want the economy to grow again so people can afford their homes.  But I don’t want the Congress to adopt policies that would make the problem worse, not better. … I think it’s our — I think it’s our obligation as Americans when we don’t agree with a policy to speak up against it and to certainly offer different solutions.

Commentary

Two ways to conduct a Tea Party revolution against socialism

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GatewayPundit is reporting that the economic news is getting even worse.

Along with raising taxes on businesses, raising taxes on the “rich,” and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire…
President Obama will also announce the implementation of an expensive cap and trade energy policy this week to battle pretend global warming.

He cites Human Events’ report that we will lose between between $444 billion and $1.308 trillion of GDP output, and unemployment would increase 2.7% (= 4 million jobs lost), mostly in the manufacturing sector.

Well, we’re doomed. Or are we? I’ve found a couple of clever ideas for dealing Obama’s plans to plunge the United States into socialism.

The first idea is from Biola University professor Doug Geivett, who is a first-class evangelical Christian scholar. I met Doug at a philosophy conference on Providence and Open Theism at Wheaton College, IL in 2000. I remember asking him whether investments were a form of gambling. He explained that investing was not gambling, because investments fund the creation of new products and services that grow the economy.

Doug starts by noting Rick Santelli’s rant against Obama’s socialist policies which involve wealth redistribution from those who produce to those who consume. (Note: there is now a new rant up, with supply-sider Larry Kudlow).

In his post, Geivett enumerates the points made by Santelli:

First, fiscally responsible Americans don’t want to pay the bill for borrowers who can’t keep up with their mortgages.

Second, fiscally responsible Americans shouldn’t have to pay the bill for borrowers who can’t make their payments.

Third, this plan doesn’t rob the rich to give to the poor. It takes from every tax-paying American and turns it over as free cash to people who can afford to rent but can’t afford to buy.

Fourth, there are ways to get the federal government to pay attention, ways the government is totally unprepared for.

Santelli suggests that responsible, productive Americans may want to consider a revolution – a kind of Chicago Tea Party. Right now, the banks are being more careful about who they give credit to. This is not a problem for responsible people with good credit history. The government is giving out bailouts to banks in order to ease credit for irresponsible consumers – the same ones that got us into this mess in the first place.

Geivett describes what he thinks this Chicago Tea Party might look like:

For example, what do you think would happen if 30% of all Americans with an income of $50,000 or more organized to do the following two things:

  1. Convert all of their assets held in the stock market and at banks and credit unions into cold, hard cash (or gold bars holed up in their bank’s safe deposit boxes)?
  2. Refused to pay income tax for 18 months (or indefinitely)?

This would remove the money that banks use for consumer loans. If no one can get credit, then no one can default, and there is no need for bailouts to these delinquents. By refusing to pay income taxes for a period of time, the government would have no funds available for bailing out their favorite special interest groups. People might finally have to stop spending and start working and saving again.

Geivett goes on to describe how this plan should incorporate reduced consumer spending, which I agree with. Somehow, America has gone terribly wrong. We use to be a nation of workers and savers. But the progress of left-wing socialism, with all the redistributing of wealth from producers to free-riders, has caused us to drift into an irresponsible, immature, hedonistic culture.

Geivett’s plan made me think of a post I read before on “Going Galt”. What if all the people who produced wealth just stopped producing?

Do you ever wonder after dealing with all that is going on with the economy and the upcoming election if it’s getting to be time to “go John Galt”? For those of you who have never read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the basic theme is that John Galt and his allies take actions that include withdrawing their talents, “stopping the motor of the world,” and leading the “strikers” (those who refuse to be exploited) against the “looters” (the exploiters, backed by the government).

…

Obama talks about taking from those who are productive and redistributing to those who are not — or who are not as successful. If success and productivity is to be punished, why bother? Perhaps it is time for those of us who make the money and pay the taxes to take it easy, live on less, and let the looters of the world find their own way.

The National Taxpayers Union explains who pays the taxes that Democrats are redistributing to their freeloading constituents. The top 50% pays 97% of all income taxes collected! The lazy half the country is freeloading off of the productive half.

The second idea that I found for responding to Obama’s socialist bailouts is to move to Canada. Captain Capitalism had this post in which he compares the two economies and concludes that Canada has a better future than the United States. Canada has a smaller deficit, a smaller debt, and is not facing a meltdown from entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security, like we are.

Investor’s Business Daily reports that:

By 2041, Social Security will be essentially broke, having exhausted its trust fund, those dollars amassed through decades of surplus payroll tax revenues that Congress will have already squandered on general budget expenditures. Medicare’s future is just as bleak. It is already spending more than it is receiving in payroll taxes.

The prime minister of Canada right now is economist Stephen Harper, a strong fiscal conservative in the mold of F.A. Hayek.

UPDATE 1: Michelle Malkin has even more ideas on what to do here.


News

Porkulus bill reverses welfare reform and nationalizes health care

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This post is just a quick summary of what the spendulus bill actually does. The Heritage Foundation notes that the bill reverses welfare reform, threatens religious liberty and effectively federalizes health care.

Against the recommendations of the Congressional Budget Office, he will sign this bill. Despite returning the nation to a sea of dependency by completely reversing President Clinton’s welfare reform in 1996, he will sign this bill. Despite the threat to religious freedom cleverly disguised in the small print, he will sign this bill. Standing steps from the federal agencies he plans on doubling in size through cherry-picked liberal programs, he will sign this bill. Using an economic emergency to shield the liberal goal of federalizing your health care, he will sign this bill. And despite the overwhelming majority of Americans in poll after poll saying ‘no’ to this bill, he will say ‘yes’.

The National Review has more on the reversal of the welfare reform, which was passed by Newt Gingrich and signed by Clinton. Porkulus actually makes the welfare problem worse than before 1996.

Under the provisions in the stimulus bill, states will once again be paid a bounty for expanding their welfare rolls. As reported by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, the federal government will now pay states 80 percent of the cost for each new family they sign up for welfare. That means that states will get $4 for every $1 they spend. This will leave the main welfare program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), with a funding mechanism similar to the one that supports Medicaid. As Brian Blase argues here, Medicaid’s funding ratio, which gives states $1 to $3 for every dollar they spend, has caused state Medicaid spending to skyrocket. If Medicaid’s dollar-for-dollar model has proved ruinous, Obama’s new $4-to-$1 ratio for welfare will prove, in all likelihood, four times so.

The Cato Institute’s blog explains how porkulus will balloon the budget deficit, and also how it is full of pork. According to the Tax Foundation’s Joseph Henchman, only about 24% of the bill is “tax cuts”, and not the good kind. Arnold Kling, speaking at a Heritage Foundation/Club for Growth event, argues that the right thing to do would have been to cut payroll taxes. Cutting payroll taxes would stimulate the economy. The Competitive Enterprise Institute notes that Cato assembled 200 economists who opposed the Generational Theft Act. CEI also notes that our current national debt is 11 trillion and that we owe 451 billion in interest per year, before porkulus even passes.

CNS News reports that the Generational Theft Act was passed without a single Republican or Democrat in the House or Senate reading it.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) predicted on Thursday that none of his Senate colleagues would “have the chance” to read the entire final version of the $790-billion stimulus bill before the bill comes up for a final vote in Congress.

“No, I don’t think anyone will have the chance to [read the entire bill],” Lautenberg told CNSNews.com.

Or, if you like video, you can see John Boehner’s disgust with the hiddenness of spendulus here. So much for “transparency”. The Democrats also broke their promise to allow the public to see the final version of the bill for 48 hours, before it was voted on. I highly recommend watching this 1 minute clip. At least the Republicans in the House did not provide cover to Obama. He will own the mess he created. Too bad the Democrats aren’t owning Clinton’s Community Reinvestment Act, which caused a lot of this sub-prime lending mess in the first place.

For details on what pork is actually in the porkulus bill, check out Tom Coburn’s list. (This may not reflect the last minute copy from Friday).