As you may have heard by now, the Democrat Congress passed the 2009 Fiscal Suicide Act that President Obama likes to call his stimulus bill. Here’s the funny thing though, Obama’s budget chief Peter Orszag called the “economic stimulus” spending spree “totally impractical.”
Of course, he wasn’t talking aboot this totally impractical economic stimulus spending spree. He was talking aboot a similar one that was presented to him when he was head of Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which liberals at one time considered to be the gold standard of economic criticism.
You know, way back in the day when they were criticizing George Bush and not Barack Obama.
Here’s what Mr. Orszag had to say then…
“Practically speaking, however, public works involve long start-up lags. Large-scale construction projects of any type require years of planning and preparation. Even those that are “on the shelf” generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to provide timely stimulus to the economy. For major infrastructure projects supported by the federal government, such as highway construction and activities of the Army Corps of Engineers, initial outlays usually total less than 25 percent of the funding provided in a given year. For large projects, the initial rate of spending can be significantly lower than 25 percent.
Some of the candidates for public works, such as grant-funded initiatives to develop alternative energy sources, are totally impractical for countercyclical policy, regardless of whatever other merits they may have. In general, many if not most of these projects could end up making the economic situation worse because they would stimulate the economy at the time that expansion was already well under way.”
I’d love to know why he’s changed his mind. Wouldn’t you?
(H/T Say Anything Blog)
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Congress is rioting, llooting the nation. They’re breaking the windows, stealing the TVs and nikes, running out with arms full of merchandise.
Tell me what is related to the crisis – is it the things that are already funded in the normal budget, like smoking cessation and birth control? Analog Tv conversion boxes are going to restore someone’s 401K – exactly HOW?
This is insanity.
This is like saying you are giving money to Katrina victims to rebuild their lives and fix their homes and then taking that money and using it build a skatepark in Denver.
Does anyone really believe painting a bridge somewhere is going to fix anything?
You’ll be at 4 trillion before this orgy is over.
Family planning is already in the national budget. Or does the REGULAR already huge budget count for NOTHING?
This is supposed to be money being spent and invested to FIX the mess – that means making the credit markets open up, it ought to mean restoring 401K funds, making people whole again, NOT a massive free for all give away to god knows who.
NO ONE has stopped to THINK about what they are doing. In a drunken orgy – our legislators are throwing pizza at the walls.
“Infrastructure” birth control, no white guys, PORK, PORK, PORK!
Nobody stopping to think, or reason. Just throw that money out the door as fast as we possibly can.
You will wake up tomorrow to the scene of the devastation, windows broken, drapes pulled down, guacamole, semen and feces ground into the carpet and pizza stuck to the ceiling.
In the meantime, the person whose retirement funds were just evaporated by half or worse gets no help. The business who can’t get his usual line of credit closes. No help, no restoration, not even any consideration, lost to the world, invisible to the legislators who only want to do what looks like they are solving the problem.
They’ll happily impose higher fees, taxes and restrictions in the name of “solutions” and the libs’ll drink that latest batch of kool-aid like it is the finest champagne.