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Edited on Sun Jul-12-09 11:21 AM by Better Believe It
Stating the obvious: Three Republican Senators (one of whom is allegedly now a Democrat) didn't write a plan that was designed to be a smashing success for President Obama and the Democratic Party. Does that really surprise anyone?
Leading economists, Noriel Roubini called it "puny", pointed out how weak the plan was for actual job creation when three Republican Senators gutted the House plan during conference.
And now we are paying the costs of a so-called "bi-partisan" stimulus agreement. Of course, Republicans can deny they had anything to do with it since it didn't get a single Republican vote in the House.
A powerful job stimulus plan that could have created several million useful public works/infrastructure jobs this year was not proposed the President Obama or the Democratic leadership in Congress. The sound job creation plan proposed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors was not even considered by President Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership! For less than 200 billion dollars, the federal government could have finance over 18,000 useful infrastructure and public works jobs that would have employed 2 million people. All of those projects would have been started and completed before the end of next year.
The economy needed that kind of a powerful economic jolt. This will not happen under the Republican written and Democrat endorsed stimulus plan. A real job creating stimulus plan could have been passed by the Democratic controlled congress without any Republican votes in the Senate. A real Republican "filibuster" in the Senate against an economic recovery would have ended quickly with a cloture vote. And all we needed was 50 Senate votes to pass it with Biden passing the tie-breaker.
Now it will be very difficult to pass a badly needed second stimulus bill, especially when President Obama says he opposed to one!
As the saying goes, the Democrats "blew their wad" with the first bill.
If President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership doesn't get their act together and function as if they had won the 2008 elections, and do this soon, the Republicans will regain their control of Congress and the White House by 2012 with major congressional gains in the 2010 election.
Of course, the Republicans never did lose their control of Congress .... at least it seems that way.
ONCE AGAIN SOME HARD FACTS ON WHERE THE STIMULUS MONEY IS GOING
Only 101 billion of the 787 billion in stimulus money is for infrastructure!
And only a small fraction of that will be spent this year!
Out of 787 billion dollars in job "stimulus" funding here is what will be spent for actual infrastructure and energy job creation projects over the next several years.
Infrastructure - $101 Billion
$30B - Highways
$20B - School Renovation
$17B - Health Information Technology
$13B - Transportation Projects
$8B - Water Projects
$7B - Military and V.A. Construction
$6B - Accelerated Deployment of Broadband
Energy Efficiency - $59.5 Billion
$22B - Federal Energy Efficiency Grants
$19B - Other Energy Efficiency Grants
$11B - Smart Electric Grid
$8B - Renewable Energy Loan Guarantees
Tax Cuts - $314 Billion
$99B - Payroll-Tax Holiday
$90B - Business Expenses Tax Breaks
$25B - Earned Income Tax Credit
$20B - Renewable Energy Tax Credit
$10B - Tuition Tax Credit
$70B - AMT Tax Cut
That's pretty much it.
The three Republican Senators who wrote the stimulus bill took out 40 billion dollars for badly need school construction, tens of billions of dollars in other infrastructure funding and added the annual alternative minimum tax (AMT)fix to the bill in order jack up the amount of the stimulus bill without actually increasing any jobs! It was a non-stimulative addition to the bill. The 70 billion dollar tax cut was going to get passed by the Senate, as it has been every year, without including it in the stimulus package! Senator Grassley proposed adding the AMT fix.
The rest of the stimulus money is mainly for badly needed economic relief such as unemployment compensation and economic assistance to state/local governments. But, those monies won't create very many jobs for the unemployed while they will enable some government workers to keep their jobs for awhile.
Now you should understand why Roubini and other leading economists said the stimulus plan was totally inadequate for the task. Roubini was a little less diplomatic calling it "puny".
And now the Republicans have been put into the position where they can attack "the Obama stimulus" for not creating the millions of jobs promised!
Nice set-up. President Obama and Democratic Party Senate leaders fell for this Republican trap in their quest for a unnecessary and self-defeating "bi-partisanship".
The three Republican Senators (one now a Democrat) gutted the House stimulus plan. Mission accomplished!
Here's the rest of the stimulus breakdown:
Aids For State and Local Gov - $217 Billion
$87B - Medicaid Cost Sharing
$79B - State Grants
$42B - State and Local Bond Tax Credit
$5B - Community Development
$4B - Rural Development
Relief - $120 Billion
$42B - Expanded Unemployment Insurance
$40B - Health Insurance for Unemployed
$20B - Expanded Food Stamps
$11B - Housing Assistance
$4B- Supplemental Social Security Income Payments
$3B - Welfare
Human Capital - $45.5 Billion
$25B - Education Programs
$15B - Federal Pell Grants
$4B - Job Training
$2B - Scientific Research
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