I Hate To Say It But Huckabee Is The Only One Who Has Got This "Rebate" Right

[ThomWV]

I understand he has said 'all we will be doing is borrowing money from China to buy more Chinese stuff'. Who can say he's wrong?

To me it looked like they were just going to give the little guy part of whatever refund he was already due back a little bit early but at the same time give businesses yet another set of tax breaks.

[calmblueocean]

1. Hate to say it, but I agree too!

Huck proposed building new highway with it, sort of a WPA move for the 21st century. Pretty surprising coming from Republican.

[ThomWV]

4. Yeah, I saw that. I'd have said a massive infrastructure rebuilding and improvement project

if it was me, but at least some sort of public works project from which every American would benefit at the same time as putting a lot of people into good solid middle class jobs both designing, building, and maintaining it. Union god dam jobs too, every single one of them, if I had my way about it.

[cascadiance]

As long as most of the work isn't "outsourced" to someone like Haliburton...

... and the jobs created are government jobs, and don't line the pockets of middlemen, I think doing something that builds an investment that rewards us with jobs and better infrastructure is a good idea.

[grantcart]

2. I agree and he was right about infrastructure.

Every state and city has projects that are ready to go just awaiting funding. That money will circulate alot more, create real jobs, than the quick dash to Walmart and the money going to China

[Virginia Dare]

3. It's the stopped clock phenomena..

he has brief moments of prescience, much like Ron Paul. However, this is the guy who just said that if we stopped buying oil from the middle east they'd be reduced to selling rugs and bagging sand.

[ThomWV]

7. Oh! Yes, certainly - otherwise the guy is a raving lunatic but on this one thing he got it right.

[Virginia Dare]

8. I think he's an honest to goodness conservative christian..

he's not faking like most of them are.

[ThomWV]

10. You're probably right (again). Same thing could have been said for Ashcroft I guess.

Same disastrous results too. However I am still really enchanted (probably the wrong word) with that night in the hospital room. If we ever get to know what was really going on in that room and what was in that envelope I think it might be recorded as one of the more significant events in our history.

[Virginia Dare]

11. There are very few true ideologues in Washington..

I'd say Grover Norquist is one. Like you say, Ashcroft may have been another. I think these types are now truly disillusioned by Bushco. They realize way too late that they've been used and abused. Too bad Bushco's got mounds of dirt on them, otherwise they might just go public.

Hucky is WAY TOO idealistic and naive for Washington. He'd be chewed up and spit out within days.

[OmahaBlueDog]

5. We wouldn't have wanted to do anything frivolous like..

.. maybe offer some 0% interest loans to help banks getting killed in the subprime mess, or possibly help out with low interest home refinancing, or give bigger tax breaks to hybrid or cng cr buyers??

[RamboLiberal]

6. Too bad he's such a whack job, fundie and a Repuke

Because he has some things right about the economy and how the middle class is being hurt. He is right on this one.

[Chovexani]

9. Broken clocks, etc.

[hfojvt]

12. I can say he's wrong

and I do have a master's degree in economics. First, imports are only 14% of GDP. So less than 20% of spending is going to other countries. Even less of that is going to China. Think of this, if I spend $150 on a chinese made ipod at Wal-mart, how much of that goes to China? There's going to be $10.5 in sales taxes, and then much of that money goes to Wal-mart's gross profits. They probably paid something like $50 for that ipod, and a chunk of that money goes to the wholesaler and the perhaps Japanese company (if it's a Sony) that owns the manufacturing process. But otherwise, much of our consumer spending is going to rent, utilities, food, gasoline, etc., and most of that is not coming from China.

Secondly, we are not borrowing that much from China. I can not get figures all that quickly wading through various internet sources, but there is less than 44% of government debt held by foreigners, and then a percentage of that being held by China. So the whole China-China thing is a bunch of hype.