Reports are coming in that a tentative agreement has been reached on the stimulus package. Collins, Nelson, and Specter were called into a closed-door meeting and the Democrats have apparently made enough concessions to get those three to change their vote (getting them the 60 votes they need to close debate and bring the bill to vote). The bill has apparently been trimmed from $937 billion to $780 billion. Apparently, some of the items that should have been in other bills to begin with, including education funding. The bill still needs to return to the House where some of the cuts might be tacked right back on to the bill.
As reported earlier, the CBO indidcated that the proposed bill will be worse for the economy than doing nothing. It is doubtful that these trivial cuts will change their opinion.
$780 billion of additional federal debt is not what the country needs (to put it into perspective, the US borrowed $800 billion in the time period from the Revolutionary War to Carter’s administration). The new deal didn’t solve the depression, it unfortunately took WWII to get the US out of the depression. If you want a more recent example, look at Japan’s attempts in the 1990’s. All they created was more debt.
The estimates of job creation from this bill are 1.3 million to 3.9 million jobs. 1.3 million jobs comes out to $600,000 per job. The most promising estimate is still 3.9 million jobs at the cost of $200,000 each. That’s not a very cost-effective bill, and it’s a poor investment for American tax dollars.
Brietbart report here.
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Posted under Economy
Written by admin on February 6, 2009
