The main criticism surrounding the House’s version of the stimulus package (now $900 billion) is that excess spending will not immediately contribute to stimulating the economy. Yesterday Republican leaders listed each spending measure they deemed to be wasteful.
Here are just a few:
The blog Suitably Flip, noting that “It’s difficult to visualize a million dollars, much less a million million dollars,” offers a graphical look at how the cost of the currently proposed stimuls package compares to previous government programs:
Big enough to dwarf any government program in history, even after adjusting for inflation. It’s bigger than the New Deal and the Iraq War combined. The interest alone will be costlier than the Louisiana Purchase or going to the moon. The $18 billion in bonuses paid legally by private Wall Street firms in 2008 – decried by the President as “shameful” – is vanishingly small in comparison (smaller even than the bill’s incremental food stamps expenditures).
Despite its passage on Wednesday, not one House Republican voted in favor of the stimulus. HSH prides itself on the of delivery non-partisan information and analysis, but sometimes things need to be said, no matter whose feathers they singe.
On Wednesday Reuters published an interview on the global economic crisis with Ian Bremmer and Nouriel Roubini, two renowned experts on global economics and their political influence.
Concern about the sheer size of, as well as wasteful spending in, the $825-billion-and-growing stimulus package is spawning a number of reactions among a public growing uneasy about the exercise.
Read the Stimulus is a new website which invites all comers to pore over the ever-growing bill. Its tagline — “$850 Billion, 1588 pages, and counting… somebody needs to read it!” — sums up its purpose:
Although President Obama promised to jettison any unnecessary spending in the $825-billion-and-growing stimulus package, there is little chance of Congress foregoing its pork:
There’s $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn’t turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There’s even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons. …
With the House expected to vote and approve the Obama administration’s stimulus package today, conservative opposition is set to branch out into full-page ads in major newspapers including the Washington Post and the New York Times. The Cato Institute, “a non-profit public policy research foundation,” with the support of 200 economists, respectfully disagrees with the administration’s solution to economic recovery:
The Cato ad opens with a Jan. 9 quote from Obama:
This week, CNNMoney.com published a piece that broke down six portions of spending from the president’s upcoming stimulus package. While CNNMoney was quick to point out that their designations were incomplete — since the numbers will “likely change before any bill is enacted” — the overview does provide consumers with a skeleton of how the spending will impact their everyday lives. I’ll highlight just one or two of the main points from each section.
Paychecks: “$145 billion in tax cuts for working individuals.
Former U.S. comptroller David Walker has some thoughts on the deficit and the upcoming stimulus package from Washington:
Walker says, “For the first time in the history of the U.S., the federal government owes more in liabilities [including unfunded commitments for Social Security and Medicare] than American households are worth.” And that gap is widening, he says. “The fiscal hole is getting deeper, and household worth continues to decline.”
The United States’ next major spending package is nearly fully formulated, expected to total somewhere in the range of $700 billion – $1 trillion. In what has been deemed the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan,” the latest stimulus package has been designed around infrastructure repairs, unemployment relief, state budget recovery, and most recently a large tax-cut initiative designed to garner Republican support. According to the Wall Street Journal, a $300 billion tax-cut program will be aimed at both individuals and businesses:
Republicans and business leaders hadn’t seen specifics of the proposals Sunday night, but welcomed the idea of basing a bigger proportion of the stimulus plan on tax cuts. Their response suggests the legislation could attract relatively broad support, and it highlighted the Obama team’s determination to win backing from varied interests.
President-elect Barack Obama and his economic team have been crafting an expansive — and costly — economic- stimulus package for Congress that is slated to be his first major act as President. According to the Wall Street Journal, Obama’s transition team gauges the price tag of the stimulus package to be between $675 billion and $775 billion over two years. Other claims report the program could reach $850 billion. But fear not, insiders have assured the Journal they are doing their best to keep the stimulus under $1 trillion (for “that could carry political consequences”).
In defense of the possible price tag: Read the rest of this entry »
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