RWNJ Conservative Views from Cincinnati

The House Republicans gave an outline of proposals for an alternative budget plan today. Specifics on how much the budget would cost and what affect it would have on the deficit are due to be released next week. Among the proposals are spending cuts on everything except defense and lowering the top tax rate from 36% to 25%. A tax cut of that magnitude would free up money used by those in a position to hire workers and would likely be a huge shot in the arm to the economy.

Senate Republicans will be introducing a series of amendments to the budget next week in an attempt to cut spending from the budget. House Democrats are able to restrict the number of amendments that can be offered, so House Republicans are opting to present their complete budget alternative when it is finished.

The big question at this point is if the Democrats will be willing to listen to alternatives or if they will continue to press their agendas forward in a unilateral fashion.

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Being a former resident of Indiana, I still follow Indiana politicians fairly closely. Evan Bayh has been one of those that I can admire for sticking to his principles, even if I don’t always agree with him. This is an example where he is sticking to his guns and is not supporting the earmark-laden $410 billion spending bill.

If I had more faith that Obama was a man of his word, I’d expect he would veto this bill… unfortunately, the President has backed out of several of his campaign promises and I cannot expect the earmark promise to be maintained either. Bayh apparently agrees.

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Another interesting poll from Rasmussen:

67% trust their judgment more than the average member of Congress. Even more surprising 44% think a group of people randomly selected from the phone book could address the nation’s problems better than Congress! Only 37% disagree with them. This does not bode well for the Democrats so early into holding majorities in the House, Senate, and Presidency.

It is clear that the stimulus package is starting to take a toll on the Democrats.  Public support is falling not only for the package, but for the party that is pushing it.  The “bold and swift action” that Obama is pressing for could end up expensive if an equally swift economic reaction does not result from its passing.

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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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