Stimulus Round-up
All that’s left for the economic stimulus bill is for President Obama to sign it. A round-up of reaction:
Dan Spencer at RedState notes an Obama quote from the day before the bill passed, “We are not going to be able to perpetually finance the levels of debt that the federal government is currently carrying.” The accompanying graphic is the ultimate irony.
CBS news reports that the President is going to convene a “fiscal responsibility summit” on February 23rd. Again with the irony. The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.
And finally, satirist Scott Ott engages in some wishful thinking:
President Barack Obama said today that “after a restless night’s sleep” he will veto the $787 billion economic stimulus package passed by Democrats in Congress on Friday.
“I had a dream,” said a visibly shaken Mr. Obama. “that my daughters, Sasha and Malia, were trapped under the 1,100-page legislation. In the dream I saw my girls as women in their forties and they were still paying for this. I woke up, and did the math, and realized that it wasn’t just a dream. Has anybody read this thing yet?”
Read the whole thing, even if Congress won’t.
Filed under: Doug • Economics & Taxes • Government • Humor
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I’d find concern about spending a nearly a trillion dollars in one year a bit more believable on the part of the Right if they expressed that same concern when we spent nearly a trillion dollars last year on our military. Or when we spent nearly a trillion dollars the year before that, or the year before that or the year before that.
In short, I’d find the Right more believable if they had some consistency on the point.
A couple things:
* The Afghanistan and Iraq Wars did not get paid for in one year. Its cost was spread out over a number of years. Democrats have spent over 3/4th of a trillion dollars with one single signature, and Obama hasn’t even really got started. (And, according to this report or this Wikipedia article, the cost of the wars hasn’t broken a trillion yet since 2001. You seem to be saying that war has cost a trillion a year, which is entirely wrong.)
* War spending is, like, y’know, constitutional. It’s one of those enumerated elements of our government. Must of the stimulus package is of dubious constitutionality. But no Congressman will challenge it lest they lose the chance to bring the pork to their district. And that’s essentially what most of this bill is; earmarks that would otherwise have gone on other bills, and likely at a lower price tag.
* Now, when you say “the Right”, do you mean Republicans or conservatives? Conservatives have complained for years about how Republicans threw out their right to call themselves the party of fiscal responsibility. We noted that, indeed, they got what they deserved when the lost control of Congress. And having George W. Bush lost his veto pen for virtually all of his first term was also decried. While this spending bill proves the adage that spending would have been worse under Democrats, it was indeed small comfort for us small-government types.
But for someone who votes Democratic and values fiscal discipline, I’d say you voted against your own values, at least on this issue.
* Our military budget is nearly a trillion dollars a year now, apart from war costs.
* I DO value fiscal responsibility, as well as national security, and think that this sort of bloated budget is contrary to both. (Or, as Washington said, “Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.”
* Some investments (which cost money, of course) ultimately SAVE money, meaning that folk who value fiscal responsibility will sometimes want to spend/invest money properly. Again, I value fiscal responsibility.
And so my point remains: IF conservatives were more consistent about smaller gov’t (and not just opposed to gov’t spending on certain programs, but wildly in favor of spending on other programs), they’d at least have more credibility. As it is, not so much with me and, I suspect, most Americans.
According to this Wikipedia article, total spending on military-related items, including the wars, is about $1 trillion. That includes Veterans Affairs, interest on earlier debt, research, etc. Only half of that is actual DoD spending.
But granted, it is a lot of cash. Again, though, I go back to the fact that this is a constitutional role of government, unlike much of the social and other spending in this stimulus that the Democrats just love. Even Hollywood almost got a bailout were it not for a Republican senator and enough Democrats with some sense that it was just barely removed. That’s not government’s role. At all.
The military is not just some “other program”. It’s an enumerated power of the government, set forth in the Constitution. I think that matters Dan. And further, we have a huge military budget because the socialist government of Europe are broke trying to pay for all their giveaways that they can’t afford to protect themselves, so we have to do it. And they complain loudly if we don’t measure up to their desires. Mr. Washington was talking about a mostly domestic military. If he had his way today, we could reduce our budget by pulling out of all these countries that the rest of the world has made our responsibility.
You’re completely missing the context here, Dan. Whenever spending comes up, you look at the dollar value of military spending and completely lose the context we’re in. When social spending comes up, you’re more than willing to excuse most of the cost (more than double what we spend on defense), and yet you ignore the context of unintended consequences, not to mention a lack of constitutional mandate. It’s not just a case of money; it’s a case of government expanding and expanding its role in our lives.
And yes, I agree that some investments can ultimately save money. Always have agreed with that. The stimulus package is way, way more than that.
And now I see what you meant by “the Right”; conservatives. I think you have conflated the Republicans in Congress with the conservative movement in general. They’ve not been fiscal conservatives for the most part, as I said. But your first and loudest objection always seems to be military spending, and on that the Republicans at least have the Constitution behind them. Well, that and the fact that we were never once successfully attacked after 9/11; something almost everybody thought was an inevitability.
Yes, Republicans have tarnished their brand, but Democrats are proving that no one holds a candle to them when it comes to spending. This is not an equivalent comparison. Both could do better. One party is demonstrably worse, if you value fiscal responsibility.
When social spending comes up, you’re more than willing to excuse most of the cost (more than double what we spend on defense), and yet you ignore the context of unintended consequences, not to mention a lack of constitutional mandate. It’s not just a case of money; it’s a case of government expanding and expanding its role in our lives.
By “conservative” I mean any of the type who would expand the military beyond reasonable amounts, award welfare to corporations and otherwise expand gov’t largely.
As to “excusing” social spending, I will note that what I have consistently advocated is small BUT SMART gov’t. I don’t want to spend money for the fun of spending money (again, see military spending for that – and our military budget, by the way, was right around <a href=”http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending#USMilitarySpending”$700 billion last year, not counting the costs of the wars).
Rather, I advocate smart spending. IF it’s going to cost $1 million to educate prisoners (leading to lower recidivism) and it costs $2 million to reimprison them otherwise, I do advocate spending that $1 million. But that’s only fiscally responsible, based on logic and supported by evidence. There’s nothing “excused” there. IF the evidence was that we were spending $1 million on educating prisoners and it ended up costing an additional $5 million to re-imprison them because they got WORSE after education, then I would not support that sort of spending.
Gov’t gets BIGGER (more invasive in our lives) when we don’t spend that money, for instance.
There’s a difference.
I don’t want to spend money for the fun of spending money (again, see military spending for that…
Do you really contend that conservatives spend money on the military “for the fun of it”? It may seem that way with no big terrorist attacks on our country, but that is the point of a military; to protect.
And again, when the world expects us to police the hot spots, yeah, it’s gonna get costly.
Rather, I advocate smart spending. IF it’s going to cost $1 million to educate prisoners (leading to lower recidivism) and it costs $2 million to reimprison them otherwise, I do advocate spending that $1 million.
Is that in the stimulus bill? Or this is purely hypothetical?
That’s hypothetical, in the sense that I don’t know if it’s in the stimulus bill. It’s real world in the sense that study after study confirms that money invested in prisoner education/rehab programs SAVES more money than it costs – twice as much in some studies (depending upon the program).
Not every spending project by the gov’t is a bad thing, that’s my point. Many times, programs ARE investments. They are fiscally responsible, they have a payback that makes fiscal sense. Now, not all programs can be so easily proven as the prisoner types.
Does NASA make fiscal sense? I doubt it. Does Arts funding? Maybe, it might be hard to demonstrate.
My point is that the “conservatives” tend to spend much much more than the “liberals” (based on the massive record deficits following Reagan/Bush/Bush). It’s just that they like to SAY “we’re for small gov’t, but just don’t pay attention to all the money we spend…”
And my point is that this stimulus was rushed through, not deliberated. All manner of pork projects were ladled onto it without knowing (or caring) whether they were investments, or stimulus, or paybacks or kickbacks. Obama said, “I won”, and for the most part froze out Republicans from behind closed doors. And the deficit he’s going to incur, with one stroke of the pen during his first month in office, would make Reagan/Bush/Bush blush.
Frankly, I don’t think Obama gets most of the blame on this. It’s the Democrats in Congress that slapped all this together. Obama gave them carte blanche to be sure, but they decided what to put in the bill. It’s Congress that deliberates the bills and gets the lion’s share of the blame. (And credit, as with the Republican Congress’ surpluses during the Clinton years.)
I’ll tell you, conservatives (and libertarians) outside the Beltway do pay attention to all the money spent by both parties. Conservatives will note, also, that the money the Soviets had to spend (into virtual bankruptcy) to try to outspend Reagan was a major factor that a) the Cold War ended and b) it ended because of budget busting rather than bunker busting. That’s an arguable point, I imagine, but assuming the point, the government kept us safe. Money well spent and lives well saved.
This is not equivalent.
For you, perhaps. For me, trying to beat the Russians by having a race to bankruptcy was economic foolishness in the extreme. If two guys are playing russian roulette and one guy kills himself, that doesn’t make the other guy a genius.