The Washington Post has a letter from Arlen Specter (R-PA) explaining why he supported the stimulus package. Here are a few snippets and some thoughts.
I am supporting the economic stimulus package for one simple reason: The country cannot afford not to take action.
Wrong, Senator. You forgot one important word in that statement. The country cannot afford to take inappropriate action. As I’ve already posted, the CBO believes that this bill will cause more harm to the economy in the long run than no action at all. Unfortunately, you have chosen not to take heed of their warning.
The unemployment figures announced Friday, the latest earnings reports and the continuing crisis in banking make it clear that failure to act will leave the United States facing a far deeper crisis in three or six months. By then the cost of action will be much greater — or it may be too late.
While I agree that some action may be beneficial, I am not victimized enough by Obama’s fear tactics to believe that we are at a point where we must act or the country will perish. Any action we take must be calculated and deliberate. Unfortunately, a good majority of this bill should be dealt with in separate appropriations bills.
The legislation known as the “moderates” bill, hammered out over two days by Sens. Susan Collins, Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman and myself, preserves the job-creating and tax relief goals of President Obama’s stimulus plan while cutting less-essential provisions — many of them worthy in themselves — that are better left to the regular appropriations process.
While I am happy that you took steps to mitigate some of the inappropriate content of this bill, there is much further to go.
Our $780 billion bill would save or create up to 4 million jobs, helping to offset the loss of 3.6 million jobs since December 2007. The bill cuts some $110 billion from the $890 billion Senate version, which would actually be $940 billion if floor amendments for tax credits on home and car purchases and money for the National Institutes of Health are retained.
So in the best anticipated scenario, we are looking at $195,000 of taxpayer dollars for each job created. The majority of these jobs are temporary (for the duration of whatever project they are working on). Average US salary is around $40,000/year. Long-term benefits of this bill aren’t even being discussed, so I must assume that they are negligible. The math isn’t making this look like a good bill, and that’s using your numbers. The CBO estimates say it could be as little as 1.3 million jobs created, putting the per job cost of this bill at $600,000. Now the math is just sickening.
“In politics,” John Kennedy used to say, “nobody gets everything, nobody gets nothing and everybody gets something.” My colleagues and I have tried to balance the concerns of both left and right with the need to act quickly for the sake of our country. The moderates’ compromise, which faces a cloture vote today, is the only bill with a reasonable chance of passage in the Senate.
I appreciate, understand, and even agree that politics is often about compromise. I also believe that there comes a time to stand in defense of your country and do what you can to prevent making things worse. This bill will raise our national debt by nearly 10%, increase government dependence, and quite possibly make our currently bad economic situation even worse. How is this compromise?
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Posted under Economy
Written by admin on February 10, 2009
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The RINO’s just served up taxpayers to be cleaned out. I’m not surprised but I was holding out some hope (slim, very slim) for the bill to get dumped.
Though I respect the sentiment you are trying to express here, House Republicans are losing touch with the American people taking the Hoover argument you’ve made yourself here.
Spending is stimulus. It creates jobs. The only people disagreeing on that are Republicans, and it’s starting to make us look desperate and petty. It’s one thing to vote as a conservative, quite another to shove one’s head up one’s ass in order to avoid acknowledging no political philosophy answers every question in every scenario.
As an economics scholar first, Republican second, I am disappointed with the poor rationale coming from within my own party on this one.
Spending has been proven over and over to only create TEMPORARY jobs. The CBO even explains this and shows that this bill in particular’s job impact will be negligible in just a few years. I’m not saying we should do nothing, but this bill will add nearly 10% to our national debt and in fact only make our problems worse in the long run. I sincerely believe that and I believe the Republicans in office believe that as well (if you watched CSPAN2 you can see they’re clearly backing up why they did not support the bill).
Standing against a bill that will make things worse isn’t the same as sticking your head in the sand. I’m disappointed that the House Republicans didn’t shout warnings more loudly. Public support for the bill continues to fall thanks to the Senate Republicans standing up against it. If the House Republicans were more vocal, perhaps this bill could have been salvaged into something that might have made a difference.
Darma–Spending is stimulus and it creates jobs? The Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 sent cash totaling over $100 billion to individuals and families; it did not create the jobs (on the contrary, jobs growth fell flat)and it failed to “stimulate” the economy as projected by those that passionately supported it. The Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 was successful in creating more national debt.
As an “economic scholar,” I’m sure that you are familiar with Milton Friedman’s permanent income theory, which holds that temporary as distinct from permanent increases in income do not lead to significant increases in consumption. I have yet to see Friedman’s theory disproven. The current stimulus package may forestall 1-2% off the unemployment rate but it will not create the strong economy that Democrats and their mouth pieces say that it will.
I’ve had major disagreements with Republicans over the last eight years. But on this issue, they are right to oppose this massive and wasteful package.