Stimulus package???

[82Rigger]

I need a little help here...

I understand that some of the items below are worthwile issues for improvement.

But will somebody please explain to me how the cornbread hell any of this stuff has anything to do with the emergency revitilization of the economy???

$50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts

$44 million for repairs at the Agriculture Department headquarters in Washington.

$200 million to rehabilitate the National Mall.

$360 million for new child care centers at military bases.

$1.8 billion to repair National Park Service facilities.

$276 million to update technology at the State Department.

$500 million for the Transportation Security Administration to install bomb detectors at airports.

$600 million for General Services Administration to replace older vehicles with alternative fuel vehicles.

$2.5 billion to upgrade low-income housing.

$400 million for NASA scientists to conduct climate change research.

$426 million to construct facilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

$800 million to clean up Superfund sites.

$150 million for the Coast Guard to repair or remove bridges deemed a hazard to navigation.

$6.7 billion to renovate and improve energy efficiency at federal buildings.

$400 million to replace the Social Security Administration's 30-year-old National Computer Center.

[phuloi]

Real Cost of Stimulus Plan? Almost $1.2 Trillion

Wednesday, January 28, 2009 4:30 PM

By: David A. Patten




Taxpayers will pay much more for the fiscal stimulus than previously revealed – over $1.17 trillion according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).


Most sources have assessed the cost of the stimulus package at approximately $825 billion. But the CBO reports those estimates do not include the cost of the money that must be borrowed to pay for the plan. [Editor's Note: To view the CBO letter reporting on the total cost of the stimulus plan, go here now.]


Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., asked the CBO - the research arm of Congress - to calculate the “money cost” of borrowing the funds needed to fulfill the stimulus projects being sought by congressional Democrats and President Obama. Like every other borrower, the government must pay back borrowed principal plus the interest on its debt.


The CBO responded with a Jan. 27 letter from CBO Director Douglas W. Elmendorf estimating the cost of borrowing the money would be $347.1 billion – or about 42 percent of the cost of the projects. That would push the total cost of the stimulus package to over $1.17 trillion.


“Such [interest] costs … are not counted for congressional scorekeeping purposes for such legislation,” Elmendorf stated in his letter to Rep. Ryan.


The true cost may climb even higher, however, because the CBO’S calculations are all based on its low-end estimate that the base cost of the stimulus package will be just $815.9 billion, compared to the $825 figure commonly used. Congressional Republicans told Newsmax on Tuesday the actual base cost of the still-evolving stimulus package is about $836 billion.


The higher the cost, the more expensive the program is to finance, and the greater the total debt burden on future taxpayers.


Ryan has been an outspoken critic of the stimulus plan. In a recent Wall Street Journal commentary he warned: “The last several months are a foreshadowing of a new era of government activism, rather than an unfortunate but necessary (and anomalous) emergency action. We will soon shift from a market-based economy to a political one in which the government picks winners and losers and extends its reach and power in unprecedented ways.”





© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

[darrels joy]

Hollow victory: Republicans deliver slap in the face to Barack Obama

President Barack Obama got the $825 (or $1.2 trillion over a decade) stimulus package through the House of Representatives but the 244 to 188 vote is a hollow victory indeed. Without a single Republican voting for the bill, his high-profile visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday came to exactly naught - at least on the House side.

Obama vowed to change Washington and usher in a new post-partisan era. The the mood music and optics were pitch perfect as he trekked up to the Hill. Republicans praised his gesture, welcomed his sincere demeanour and appreciated his willingness to listen.

Problem was, he wanted only to listen and did not want to act on what Republicans said. When he was asked if he would re-structure the package to include more tax cuts, he reportedly responded: "Feel free to whack me over the head because I probably will not compromise on that part."

He apparently added: " I understand that and I will watch you on Fox News and feel bad about myself."

That's fine. No doubt Obama will indeed get beaten up on Fox News. But his failure to get even the squishiest moderate Republican - including the 11 entertained in the White House by Rahm Emanuel last night - to back him is not merely a big score for Rep Eric Cantor, Republican Whip, and the rest of the GOP leadership.

It also shows that it is not just Fox, the loony Right or Rush Limbaugh - or however else you might want to characterise the opposition in order to marginalise it - who had grave misgivings about the content of the bill.

The Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill badly miscalculated by treating the bill as a victor's charter. Not that it seemed to bother Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, who grinned from ear to ear as she announced the result of the vote.

Obama said yesterday he did not feel he had ownership of the bill. Be that as it may, if it goes through the Senate in similar fashion and is signed into law then - the efforts of Pelosio and Senator Harry Reid notwithstanding - it will be his and his alone.


http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/toby_ha...o_barack_obama

[MORTARDUDE]

The criminal bankers, lying voted-in-for-life-whats-in-it-for-me-career- politicians, of both parties, and the Fed and Treasury have already stolen nearly 9 Trillion dollars of your hard earned tax money since Paulson-Bush-Bernake proclaimed the "emergency" in September 2008...........so what did you expect, anyway ???

Larry

[SuperScout]

This year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format:



Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.



Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.



Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. Only a smidgen.



Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set or a new computer, thus stimulating the economy.



Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China ?
A. Shut up.

[darrels joy]

Harry Reid's dictatorship of bad ideas

By BILL WILSON
SPECIAL TO THE REVIEW-JOURNAL


Last September, Louisiana's David Vitter strode to the podium of the U.S. Senate to offer an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2009.

What's so significant about that?


Amazingly, it marks the last time that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid permitted a Republican amendment to be voted on -- a period of 125 days that can only be described as a diabolical, dictatorial suppression of democracy in what we still like to pretend is the world's greatest deliberative body.

If open, honest debate and a full, fair discussion of divergent ideas are prerequisites to representative democracy, then the unavoidable reality imposed upon us by "Dear Leader" Reid's heavy-handed tactics is this: the United States of America is no longer a representative democracy.

Of course, as depressing a reality as this is -- are we really surprised?

After all, Reid and the vast majority of Washington politicians in both parties have been steadily eroding the democratic ideals this nation was founded on for years now. They've been telling hard-working Americans of all income levels that they must pay higher taxes and fees on everything under the sun -- crippling their ability to survive in a land of dried up opportunities, a land where political correctness trumps founding wisdom and individual liberties are granted or withheld almost exclusively at the whim of the state.

Most recently, these Washington "leaders" essentially gave up on our free market economic system to the tune of at least $8 trillion in socialist-style government interventionism -- all within the past four months.

No wonder these hyenas are now circling in the Senate, hoping to finish off another one of our nation's founding ideals. And what's to stop them?

After all, nobody's storming the capital in outrage despite the fact that the U.S. Congress currently has an unheard of 9 percent -- that's 9 percent! -- approval rating.

You see, the best way to silence the 91 percent of people who don't approve of what's going on in Washington right now is to simply silence any of their representatives who dare to dissent.

Which is precisely what Reid is doing, while at the same time ramming through billions of dollars in wasteful spending, including the new "economic stimulus bill," featuring such "must-have" items as $2.4 billion for "carbon capture demonstrating technologies," $1.5 billion for "good jobs in biomedical research," and $600 million divvied up among government officials to help them buy brand spanking-new energy-efficient cars.

But such is Reid's governing philosophy -- which he is certainly entitled to.

Except he's imposing that philosophy on the Senate by eliminating legitimate debate on issues -- and using behind-the-scenes procedural moves to do so.

Make no mistake, if you think that the bad decisions this Congress has made in full public view over the past few months have had disastrous consequences for America, just wait till you see what they're capable of when the doors are closed to any real discussion.

Astoundingly, Republican "leaders" are not only sitting back and letting this happen, they're empowering Reid's dictatorship.

Sadly, Sen. Mitch McConnell decided it was necessary to criticize one of the few U.S. senators who is actually doing his job and standing up for the taxpayers: Oklahoma's Tom Coburn.

While Coburn was attempting to amend a pork-laden land bill that included $3.5 million for a birthday party in St. Augustine, Fla., McConnell felt it was more important to demonstrate his misguided bipartisanship by helping Reid gather Republican votes to shoot down Coburn's efforts.

"This isn't the greatest deliberative body in the world, this is the greatest choke-hold body in the world," Coburn said on the Senate floor recently.

He's right. But fortunately, Reid's tactics are finally beginning to rub some senators the wrong way.

"Coburn may not win this one, but I think there is an increasing unease that the traditions of the Senate are eroding, that bills are being railroaded through and no amendments are being allowed," said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

Hopefully at some point enough senators will join Coburn in standing up for their republic, for a change, not kissing the ring of a dictatorial tyrant.


Bill Wilson is president of Americans for Limited Government (www.getliberty.org), a libertarian think tank.

http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/38589694.html