The Democrat congress has released the early draft of the 2009 Fiscal Suicide Act, otherwise known as Obama Stimulus. A website has been set up called ReadtheStimulus.org, so you can read the bill for yourself and see just how $850 Billion of your tax dollars is being spent to “save the economy.”
For example, on page 23 of the bill is a $14 million allocation for a seven-member “Recovery Act Accountability and Transparency board.” That’s roughly $2 million per person. That’s some change you can believe in right there!
House Leader John Boehner, after originally being so flabbergasted he couldn’t find the words, had more to add. As per Stephen Hayes from the Weekly Standard:
Boehner asked how NASA was going to spend $400 million fighting global warming, if ACORN would qualify for community development grants, and whether federal money should be used for waterslides. He wondered why taxpayers were providing handouts to universities with billion-dollar endowments.
“I want to know how digital TV coupons are going to stimulate our economy,” he said, pointing out a Democratic proposal to help citizens who still watch television using an antenna convert to digital next month. “I just read last week that 94 percent of the people who needed a converter for their digital–to receive their digital signal–had already gotten it. And so if there’s only 6 percent of American TVs that still need these, how could we possibly spend $650 million on this?” It’s a good argument. How indeed?
Somewhere in the middle of all this is Obama’s middle class tax cut. Or, not so much a tax cut as much as a $500 rebate check which a) didn’t work when they tried it a few months ago, and b) the Democrat Senate wants to strip out of the bill anyways. As for what makes the rebate checks ineffective, I give you the Cato Institute:
Unfortunately, all reports indicate that the Obama plan will revolve around a gimmicky idea to give $500-$1,000 of tax relief to every household. Households certainly will be happy to receive this money, and I surely will cash any check that President Obama sends in my direction, but simply giving people money does not give them any reason to engage in additional productive behavior. And without more work, saving, investment, or production, there is no increase in national income.
So where does this leave we conservatives? Honestly, it’s too soon to tell. President Obama has said that he wants to work with us and is planning to meet with both the Republican conferences in the House and the Senate. He says he wants to hear our ideas, and is planning a (his words, not mine) “fiscal responsibility” summit. I take him at his word.
However if the 2009 Fiscal Suicide Act is the best we’ve got, it’s time for the Republican Party to nut up or shut up. There are more than enough Democrats in both the House and the Senate to give Obama whatever he wants, so there’s NO reason for us to help if we’ve got serious principles objections to what is being presented. The forty-three who voted against releasing the second half of the TARP funds was a good start.
Let the Democrats pass the 2009 Fiscal Suicide Act, minus the tax cuts Obama promised the middle class, with only fifty-nine senate votes as opposed to eighty.
I believe the proper terminology is “Legacy Vote”
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