Here's Senator Charles Schumer, on the subject of whether or not you care about the stimulus bill having more pork than the Chicago stockyards. (The video only lasts 16 seconds, unlike this Schumer quote, which I hope will last forever, and be widely mocked wherever caring people gather to give a damn.)
4 comments:
One person's jobs bill is another's pork.
It's only pork if it's in someone else's district. The Republicans (and commentators on the right) are being completely disingenuous with their holier-than-thou posturing.
Like it or not, Schumer speaks the truth.
From a percentage point of view, the stuff the Republicans are calling "pork" barely passes the threshold of a rounding error.
Dr.,
Remember the days when billions were real money, and not rounding errors?
After the 2nd or 3rd HEAPING TRILLION, the rounding errors start to add up.
I believe anything touted as a "jobs bill" can safely go into the porcine category, whether it's in a Democratic district, a Republican district, or a red-light district.
The bill in this discussion was so heavily laden with bacon that I'm more than a little surprised that a fairly devout Son Of Abraham like Schumer would be willing to touch it.
The National Priorities website claims that the Iraq war has cost $596 billion, so perhaps a 800 billion dollar economic stimulus to Democrat donors was only fair. (As best I can tell, the 700 billion Wall Street bailout was more or less evenly split between the Mommy faction and the Daddy faction.)
There are some of us, however, that really do wish both factions would call in sick for a couple of years.
So -- I gather you think this economic mess can be cured by tax cuts alone. To someone out of work, a tax cut doesn't count for shit, and in fact borders on adding insult to injury.
Is your solution to just wait for the "Invisible Hand" of the Free Market to stimulate us?
Wait -- that came out wrong.
Dr.,
20% of this spending will kick in this year.
Another 20% will kick in next year.
The remainder of it kicks in later.
However, everyone knows that it's already on the bar tab, and that the government will have to either tax to get the money, or will merely print the money. (God knows they don't have any money.)
Say you were considering starting a small business. What would make you more likely to do so, and take the risk of hiring someone? 80 billion on Reid's monorail from Disneyland to Vegas? More money spent on infrastructure in 2011? The knowledge that dollars are about to be worth even less? Tax increases?
Or perhaps you would be more likely to hire someone if you knew that Uncle Sam had learned his lesson, and was going to get out of the economy altogether? No more Fannie's, Freddie's, Fed's or Stimuluses, or Community Reinvestment Acts?
Nobody is going to start hiring until they fully understand what the current bunch of nutcases is going to do.
If they were to cut the corporate tax rate from 30% to 10%, and then call in sick for a couple of years, we'd see an unimagineable boom.
But that wouldn't be fair.
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