Post by lazarus on Feb 4, 2009 18:40:20 GMT -5
The Liberal Agenda Disguised As “Stimulus” Spending
Rahm Emanuel, the new White House Chief of Staff, was quoted as saying “Never allow a crisis to go to waste…They are opportunities to do big things.” The leftists in Washington are using our economic recession as their opportunity to grow government and fund all their liberal projects—at the expense of the American taxpayer.
The so-called “stimulus” bill, more aptly referred to as the Trillion Dollar Spending Bill, has liberal education, healthcare, and environmental policies in it. It had family planning funding in it too, before it was taken out due to public outcry.
Here are the facts:
• The bill gives the Department of Education an extra $142 billion this year. This is an unprecedented increase in federal power, designed to make Congress a national school board. Who do we want making decisions about our children’s future—Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid or parents, teachers, and principals?
• The bill does create minimal “green jobs”, but only at the expense of other jobs. Instead of having coal plant workers, the Left would prefer there to be windmill builders—it is a zero sum game. Plus, the jobs in wind farms produce a less reliable output at a higher cost than jobs in coal or nuclear power. Additionally, the “stimulus” has over $35 billion for the Department of Energy, more than doubling their budget (their current budget is $23.8 billion).
• Lastly, the bill spends $87 billion to bail out states that have overrun their Medicaid budgets (while at the same time expanding this welfare program for the poor to the unemployed, regardless of income). The addition of billions of dollars for comparative effectiveness research and Health IT sets up a federal infrastructure for health care rationing. These provisions are an incremental strategy to have government control more and more of the health care sector – leaving individuals and families with less and less control over their personal health care decisions.
What are the consequences of this sort of proposal?
1) Bigger Government. At a trillion dollar price tag, this bill will likely triple the Federal government’s annual budget, and aims to extend the role and reach of the federal government. This bill makes the New Deal pale in comparison.
2) Massive debt. The United States looks to issue between $3.5 and $4 trillion of government debt over the next two years, possibly more, thanks to deficit spending under current policy, the stimulus bill, and the financing of TARP II. To put this in context, the total publicly held debt today is about $6.4 trillion, so we’re talking about increasing the outstanding debt by more than half in just two years.
3) Increased Interest Rates. Nations around the world are faced with similar prospects of enormous new debt issuance. Canada, for example, is expected to run a deficit this year for the first time in more than a decade, while Germany, the UK, and other countries in Europe and Asia are looking at huge deficits and huge stimulus plans. We’ve reached the point where deficits are now large enough nationally and worldwide to drive up interest rates.
www.askheritage.org/
Rahm Emanuel, the new White House Chief of Staff, was quoted as saying “Never allow a crisis to go to waste…They are opportunities to do big things.” The leftists in Washington are using our economic recession as their opportunity to grow government and fund all their liberal projects—at the expense of the American taxpayer.
The so-called “stimulus” bill, more aptly referred to as the Trillion Dollar Spending Bill, has liberal education, healthcare, and environmental policies in it. It had family planning funding in it too, before it was taken out due to public outcry.
Here are the facts:
• The bill gives the Department of Education an extra $142 billion this year. This is an unprecedented increase in federal power, designed to make Congress a national school board. Who do we want making decisions about our children’s future—Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid or parents, teachers, and principals?
• The bill does create minimal “green jobs”, but only at the expense of other jobs. Instead of having coal plant workers, the Left would prefer there to be windmill builders—it is a zero sum game. Plus, the jobs in wind farms produce a less reliable output at a higher cost than jobs in coal or nuclear power. Additionally, the “stimulus” has over $35 billion for the Department of Energy, more than doubling their budget (their current budget is $23.8 billion).
• Lastly, the bill spends $87 billion to bail out states that have overrun their Medicaid budgets (while at the same time expanding this welfare program for the poor to the unemployed, regardless of income). The addition of billions of dollars for comparative effectiveness research and Health IT sets up a federal infrastructure for health care rationing. These provisions are an incremental strategy to have government control more and more of the health care sector – leaving individuals and families with less and less control over their personal health care decisions.
What are the consequences of this sort of proposal?
1) Bigger Government. At a trillion dollar price tag, this bill will likely triple the Federal government’s annual budget, and aims to extend the role and reach of the federal government. This bill makes the New Deal pale in comparison.
2) Massive debt. The United States looks to issue between $3.5 and $4 trillion of government debt over the next two years, possibly more, thanks to deficit spending under current policy, the stimulus bill, and the financing of TARP II. To put this in context, the total publicly held debt today is about $6.4 trillion, so we’re talking about increasing the outstanding debt by more than half in just two years.
3) Increased Interest Rates. Nations around the world are faced with similar prospects of enormous new debt issuance. Canada, for example, is expected to run a deficit this year for the first time in more than a decade, while Germany, the UK, and other countries in Europe and Asia are looking at huge deficits and huge stimulus plans. We’ve reached the point where deficits are now large enough nationally and worldwide to drive up interest rates.
www.askheritage.org/
