What Happened To The Stimulus Money?

And why are teacher’s, firefighter’s and police officer’s salaries a federal concern?

The stimulus bill signed into law last February was a 787 billion dollar boondoggle. The total package, with interest on borrowed money, will put the thing over 1 TRILLION dollars. The unfortunate thing is that we got very little for our money and the things it was spent on are NOT things that will stimulate the economy and a lot of them are things states are responsible for.

Obama is pleading with Democrats to pass another 50 BILLION dollars of “emergency” funds to prevent teachers, firefighters and police officers from being laid off.

President Obama urged reluctant lawmakers Saturday to quickly approve nearly $50 billion in emergency aid to state and local governments, saying the money is needed to avoid “massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters” and to support the still-fragile economic recovery. Washington Post

The first thing we should realize is that the federal government is not responsible for teachers, firefighters or police officers unless they work for the federal government. The states AND ONLY THE STATES are responsible for the people in these professions who work in the individual states. It is not the responsibility of taxpayers from Maryland to pay for the teachers, firefighters or police officers in Michigan or any other state. Each state is responsible and using federal tax dollars to pay for these things taxes Americans twice for the same thing.

People are taxed by their states to pay for these services and then their federal tax dollars are used to pay for the same services, often because of mismanagement at the state level.

It is up to the states to decide if they can afford to pay for the same level of services or if they will have to be scaled back. The states need to decide whether or not to raise taxes to pay for these things. It is not the responsibility of the federal government and our tax dollars should not be paying it.

This is Obama pushing our tax dollars to the people in the unions. Obama has the support of the teachers and many of the law enforcement and firefighting unions (whether the individual members support him or not) and he wants to ensure he has their votes so he will pay for them with OUR money.

Obama already signed one stimulus into law and that stimulus provided for teachers and for law enforcement.

  • $4 billion for state and local law enforcement agencies
  • $44.5 billion in aid to local school districts to prevent layoffs and cutbacks, with flexibility to use the funds for school modernization and repair (State Equalization Fund)

Wikipedia

Read the Wiki article and see how much money the stimulus funneled to things that will not, in any way shape or form, stimulate the economy. The total education package was over 90 BILLION dollars.

Obama spent 48.5 BILLION dollars for teachers and law enforcement and now he wants 50 BILLION dollars more. If the stimulus worked as sold then these entities would not need additional money, if we were to accept that the federal government should be paying for them at all.

The stimulus is not stimulating and it is a failure. Obama wants more money to throw at his supporters in the unions at the expense of the taxpayers and our national sovereignty. How much more debt will we accrue before we are totally owned by another country?

It is not the job of the federal government to pay for the salaries of people working for the individual states. The states are solely responsible for these salaries and if they cannot afford them then they need to make the same tough decisions that plenty of private companies have made and lay off employees.

Obama is trying to use OUR money to pay off the unions and to pander for their votes. We should not be paying for these things and it is criminal that we paid for them with the first stimulus.

Let us not keep making the same mistakes by continuing to throw good money after bad on an economic folly.

Never surrender, never submit.
Big Dog

Gunline

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Proof Stimulus Is A Failure

Barack Obama is putting pressure on Congress to pass a 30 BILLION dollar package designed to jump start job creation. Obama’s administration has lost millions of jobs (net) despite the bogus “saved job” category used to deceive people into thinking that taxpayer money has saved jobs and without it unemployment would be higher.

President Obama Friday repeated his call for Congress to pass a $30 billion package to foster hiring and help tackle painfully high levels of unemployment.

“I’m hopeful the House will pass these measures next week and that the Senate will follow as soon as possible—with support from both Democrats and Republicans,” Obama said in remarks delivered in the White House Rose Garden. CNBC

[note]The article points out that Obama said fewer than 20% of the jobs would be government jobs. Greater than 20% of the jobs “created” so far have been government jobs. About 90% of the jobs in the last jobs report were temporary census workers (read government) jobs. But Obama praised the numbers.[/note]

Obama passed a 787 BILLION dollar stimulus package that was supposed to keep unemployment below 8% and was supposed to jump start job creation. Obama said the number one goal of his economic plan was to create 3 million jobs in the next two years (MSNBC 16 Jan 2009).

The stimulus was touted as a job creator and was needed to keep unemployment from rising. Unemployment has been stagnate at just under 10% for most of the time since the stimulus was passed.

When things kept going bad the regime told us that things were worse than they thought or that no one knew how bad it was. We were then told that this was a slow process and that the stimulus needed time to work. But we are not on the track that was spelled out in his economic report. We are well behind what they predicted.

When this has been pointed out the Obama apologists tell us that the stimulus will take time and was never intended to work quickly (despite the initial claims and the report). The Obama regime told us that it would take at least until the end of 2010 before we saw improving jobs results.

Well which is it?

In either case, Obama’s request for more money to stimulate jobs is an indication that the stimulus is a failure.

If it was supposed to work more quickly, as was initially reported, then the 30 billion dollar request is an admission that it did not work as sold.

If it was anticipated that the job growth would be slower and that we would not see results until the end of 2010 at the earliest then why ask for more money now? Let’s wait to see if it works as stated when the time frame was revamped before we throw more money into the black hole.

The fact that Obama is asking for more money now is an indication that he does not believe that his stimulus will work. He knows that things will not get better as a result of his plans and he wants to appear as if he is doing all that he can because it is an election year and he knows that his party stands to get trounced.

The request for this money to stimulate jobs is an admission by Obama that his stimulus did not work as planned and that he does not expect it to work as planned.

It is a political move to throw good money (if the US actually has any good money) after bad during an election year.

The stimulus is a very expensive failure.

How many times will Obama go to the well before people begin to see this?

Related:
Retail Sales Slump

Never surrender, never submit.
Big Dog

Gunline

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Obama Still Blames Bush

The country elected an inexperienced Socialist to the White House and it is evident each and every day that this was a mistake. Obama is unable to accept responsibility for anything and points fingers outward all the time. Ironically, he was the one who criticized the companies involved in the oil spill for pointing fingers.

Obama’s favorite target is George Bush. When something goes wrong Obama is quick to point out that Bush did it and it is all his fault. Obama ignores his own fault and rewrites history every chance he gets. His latest take is that the Republicans were responsible for the economic problems despite the best effort of Democrats to keep the ship right. This smacks in the face of reality since it was Republicans who warned about problems with the financial sector and Democrats who said that things were fundamentally sound and that there were no problems.

Barney Frank is now rewriting history by saying he never called for home ownership for all and just wanted people to be able to rent homes. This is a blatant lie. He called for mortgages to be given to low income families. Mortgages, for the challenged, are what people take out when they buy a home, not rent one.

Obama is working on his plan for the upcoming election and that plan is to blame it all on Bush. Obama will try to pin the problems the country has faced over the last nearly two years on Bush even though he [Obama] had fool proof majorities in the House and Senate and failed to get much done. His party is responsible for the high unemployment and though he will try to spin that, the reality is unemployment is much higher than under Bush and is higher than Obama said it would be when the Democrats passed the now failed stimulus package.

Obama tried to pin things on Bush in Virginia and New Jersey and he lost both governors. He tried this tack with Massachusetts and lost a Senate seat held by Democrats for nearly five decades.

Obama got away with blaming Bush for problems right after he took office but at some point people have to look at things and decide that they are now Obama’s issues. That point has been crossed and people are no longer buying the blame Bush mentality. Well, except for the rabid base that thinks Bush is responsible for all the bad in the world.

The sane among us know differently. When the election rolls around the Democrats will have had control of Congress for nearly four years and the White House for nearly two. The Democrats were in charge when things went south and they took complete control and drove things deeper into the abyss. Their years of pandering to people and redistributive policies have caused problems for the economy and our society as a whole.

But Obama will ignore all of this and blame it all on Bush.

What do you expect from a man who claims that his regime thwarted several terrorist attacks when the reality is the attackers were too inept to detonate their devices. The only thing that saved people was blind luck. That is what happens when the most transparent regime fails to provide intelligence information in accordance with the law.

And luck is not proper mission planning.

Not to worry, he can blame that on Bush as well…

Source:
Politico

Never surrender, never submit.
Big Dog

Gunline

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Never Too Big To Fail

The government and its moron minions discuss the “too big to fail” meme as if it is true. The reality is, without failure you are not living. Failure, while bad, is a part of life and is experienced by everyone. No one is too big to fail:

Imagine that…

Never surrender, never submit.
Big Dog

Gunline

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BREAKING: Obama Embraces Limbaugh Policy Ideas

Obama the Great is giving his State of the Union Address and in it he just said that his plan to stimulate the economy and create jobs will involve giving tax credits to small businesses and ELIMINATING the capital gains tax on small businesses. He also talked of corporate tax breaks.

This is nearly the exact thing Rush Limbaugh TOLD Obama needed to be done. On January 26th of last year, six days after the coronation, Limbaugh proposed the Obama-Limbaugh Bipartisan Stimulus Plan of 2009. In it he said that his part of the plan would include tax cuts:

These tax cuts will consist primarily of capital gains tax cuts and corporate tax rate cuts.

Limbaugh said that the way to stimulate the economy and create jobs was to cut the capital gains tax and the corporate tax. This was poo pooed by the left who claim that tax cuts do not achieve the stated goals and that only spending will work. Obama opted for the spending and unemployment is now at 10% and his Stimulus has been a bust.

Tonight Obama embraced the wisdom of Rush Limbaugh. He did not go for it in total because he only wants to cut small business capital gains on investments and Limbaugh called for a capital gains tax cut on individual capital gains as well. But this is a start.

By making this proposal, Barack Obama has admitted that the liberal ideology is wrong. He has admitted that liberal tax and spend policies do not work. He has admitted that liberalism and its ways is a complete hoax.

And he has admitted that Limbaugh was right.

He has embraced the conservative principle of tax cuts to stimulate. He has taken the advice of the man he tried to demonize only a few short months ago.

Rush Limbaugh was right and Obama was wrong. Obama as much as admitted that.

Make no mistake. Obama is trying to appeal to an electorate (particularly Independents) that is fed up with the way he is running things. He is trying to stop the bleeding from the wounds of the Brown victory in Massachusetts. He is taking this approach to try and win in November.

But he has thrown his party and its ideology under the bus. When things get better the country will see that liberalism is a failed exercise in futility.

And they will see that Limbaugh was right all along.

Big Dog

Gunline

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