Why Does Stimulus Vote Surprise People?
Feb 13, 2009 Political
Not the fact that Democrats are voting for a bill that is loaded with special interests and will do little to help the economy. No, why are people surprised they voted FOR something that they have not read and do not know about completely. These people supported Barack Obama. They voted for him even though he was not vetted and his troubles were ignored or covered up by the media. They voted FOR him without knowing much about him.
The whole stimulus plan is a sham. The bill, in its final form, was more than 1000 pages (earlier reports indicated it was nearly 1500) and it was distributed at 2300 last night. There is no way that anyone could have read the entire thing in that little bit of time. I hope that someone slipped in a provision for all Democrats and the three traitorous Republicans to resign and for Obama to have to provide a birth certificate. That would be absolutely hilarious. Obama wants to sign it Monday and you can bet he will not be able to read the entire thing before then. It does not matter because he is only interested in spending, not actually producing results.
Look at what we have in this mess:
- The bill passed with all but 7 Democrats voting for it and all but 2 Republicans voting against it. The 2 Republicans did not vote. This means that all who voted for it voted for something that they have not read and do not know.
- The bill was touted as one that provides tens of thousands of jobs even though no one has read it. No one knows what it includes or what it will do because they have not read it. In fact, one Congressman said they voted with one hand and crossed the fingers on the other. This is not leadership and it shows that even though they claim that something must be done now and that the bill is good, they don’t know.
- The so called administration of transparency has broken a campaign promise to post bills on the web 5 days before they are voted on so that the public can view them. The Democrats promised the bill would be posted on the internet for 48 hours before it was voted on. That did not happen. Does it surprise anyone that they broke their word? Nancy Pelosi needs to get out of town for her taxpayer paid vacation in Rome. She will have a few meetings while she is there.
- A Senator has predicted that none of his colleagues will have had the chance to read the bill before they vote on it. This is irresponsible. The Democrats in the Senate will vote for it and they have not read it. They are just like their House partners in crime.
- Barack Obama said that the lobbyists needed to be taken out of the process. He campaigned on changing DC and the politics as usual. The bill was on K Street in the hands of the lobbyists before staffers got it. The lobbyists had to go over it and make sure none of the payback they demanded had been left out. They had to ensure all the special interests were addressed. They had to ensure they knew what was in the trough they will be feeding from.
I have only read portions of the bill but from the lists I have seen it contains nothing but pet projects and items from the liberal wish list. It will not reduce the unemployment rate (I believe the extension of unemployment benefits is designed to make the numbers go up so the Dems can claim they are doing a good job when the numbers go down next year. It will be an election year) as FDR saw when he did the same things. The unemployment rate varied little under him and his plans and only went down markedly when the US entered WW II.
Barack Obama is unable to see this and his explanation for the failure under FDR is that he did not spend enough. Well one thing is certain. This bill spends enough. If it works and things get better then Obama can say he was right and if things get worse then we will know the real truth. Should that happen, Obama will say he did not spend enough and needs even more money.
The CBO says that the situation will improve by the second half of this year even if Congress does not spend one cent on the problem. That is what happens in recessions. Things get bad and then they get better all on their own. Government intervention makes things worse and prolongs the problem. FDR and Carter proved that. The reason Democrats are rushing this bill through is so that they can get their pet projects passed before the economy improves on its own. Once the economy improves they will not be able to use it and fear to get what they want. Obama is not letting this crisis go to waste…
If the economy begins to recover on its own the Dems will claim credit for the improvement. However, I think that the infusion of borrowed money will prolong the recession and things will not get better for quite some time. History shows us this will happen.
Spending money we do not have is a problem and up until this year Democrats were screaming about the deficit under Bush. They said it was irresponsible to run up a huge deficit (though they had done so in all the years past) and that we needed to get it under control. Obama entered office and all that went out the window even though he was one of the folks who leveled criticism at Bush.
Pelosi is off to Europe and the bill is heading to the Senate. Not one of the people elected to run the country has read it and yet they voted for it.
This is not leadership. It is a dereliction of duty.
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Tags: bill, chimps, huge spending, irresponsible, massive bill, Obama, Pelosi, pet projects, pork, Rome, spending, trip
Obama Sees Benefit of not Taxing the Rich
Jun 18, 2008 Political
Barack Obama is cut from the same cloth as many Democrats before him. Tax and spend, and then tax and spend some more. Democrats always talk about taxing the rich as if that would solve our problems and as if the Rich don’t pay enough in taxes as it is. Whenever tax cuts are mentioned Democrats recoil like Dracula exposed to a Cross. Tax cuts are always bad unless the have a candidate running in a conservative region. Then they talk about how wonderful tax cuts are. Of course, to a Democrat, tax cuts are always for the rich. This is partially true because the rich pay most of the taxes in this country. However, the middle class made out better under the last tax cuts than the rich did. I don’t include the poor because they pay little, if any, taxes (why they did not get a rebate when the president cut taxes).
Democrats let the cat out of the bag recently when they discussed the “rebate” checks. They all talked about how the economy would be stimulated and that is what they named the bipartisan venture; The Economic Stimulus Bill. Democrats were forced to admit that allowing Americans to keep more of their money causes them to spend more and is better for the economy. The problem is, they gave the money to people who pay little or no taxes. Notice I say gave. In some cases they returned the money to people who paid taxes but a lot of people who pay absolutely nothing in taxes received tax “rebates” from money paid in by others. The Democrats will admit that lower taxes (that is what an economic stimulus is, after all) are good for the economy when it is an election year but they never quite seem to understand that it is better to take less from people than to take it and give some back when an election is not around the corner.
Barack Obama has been talking about how he will end Bush’s tax cuts “for the rich” and how he will tax people who make more than $250,000 a year. He would also lower taxes on the middle class, a group that shoulders a smaller part of the country’s burden than those making more. Obama is full of taxes. Tax this, tax that but in all of it, he admitted that it might not be wise to tax the rich after all:
Among Obama’s other proposals: raising the tax on capital gains and qualified dividends. However, Obama has raised the possibility of deferring some of his tax hikes on the wealthy given the ailing economy. My Way News
So Barry O Bam Bam understands that taxing the wealthy is not a great idea in a difficult economy. He must understand that doing so would make the economic problems much worse because it is the money of the wealthy that provides jobs and business opportunities. It is also the wealthy spending their money that helps stimulate the economy and when they are taxed more they spend less or, like members of Congress, they look for more tax free investments. If taxing them during down times is a cause for concern then why would it be OK to tax them in up times? Higher taxes result in economic troubles and no country ever taxed its way to prosperity. The way to make things better is for Congress to eliminate wasteful spending and there is a lot of that to eliminate.
Of course, Barry O Bam Bam can’t exactly do that since he is proposing trillions in additional wasteful spending. I am willing to bet he will not defer his plans to spend because of the ailing economy.
Tags: economy, Obama, rebates, spending, stimulus, tax the wealthy, taxes
Democrats fail to control government spending
May 13, 2008 Political
The Democrats promised to have an open government and to clean up the mess left by Republicans after 12 years of control. The Republicans brought the mess on themselves by turning into Democrats and increasing the size of government and the associated spending. Now that the Democrats have taken control spending continues to escalate even with record revenue to the treasury.
April saw an increase in revenue fueled by the tax deadline, a date where Americans demonstrate their lack of freedom by paying the government the fruits of individual labor. A total of $403.8 billion dollars was taken in by the government in April but spending for the month was higher than in April of last year. The deficit will get worse in the coming months as rebate checks go out, many to people who paid no taxes to begin with.
The federal government does not have an income problem, it has a spending problem. The politicians simply cannot control their spending habits and that means they need to take more and more of our money. Record revenues cannot keep them from spending more than they take in.
When Republicans were in control everything was blamed on them. The Democrats are now in control and this increase in spending comes on their watch. The size of government continues to grow and the Democrats continue to spend. Their open government is filled with back room deals and shady tactics allowing them to hide what they are doing.
The fact that we pay taxes is bad enough but the idea that they keep taking more and fail to control spending is even worse. We are supposed to be a free country but Americans did not enjoy their own money until April 23rd this year (it would have been later but the “rebate1” checks moved the date to the left). Everything we earned up until that date was required to satisfy our tax bill for the year. That means Americans, in effect, belong to the government and are forced to work for the government. Forced. The money is taken, not given and that means we are anything but free. We ended the practice of owning people and forcing them to work for free. The government must not have gotten the memo.
Instead of being a government of the people we are a government that enslaves the people. If the average employer took money from his employees he would go to jail. We are the employers of those in government and yet they confiscate our money.
The Democrats are in charge and government is growing. That does not relieve Republicans of any responsibility because government got bigger under their control as well. The only way to fix this problem is to vote every one of them out of office and start with new people and fresh ideas. We need to vote in people, regardless of party, who will limit the size of government and cut government spending. Otherwise we need to abolish the government and start over.
The spending problem is not new but the Democrats made a big issue of all the things that happened with Republicans in charge (even though the Democrats were just as guilty). That being the case, it is now time to hold the Democrats responsible for what is happening on their watch. The price of gasoline was $2.19 when they took control and now it is approaching $4.00. All of the economic woes happened since they took control and they are to blame for them. During the 2006 elections the economy was not an issue and the Democrats trumpet that they won because people are fed up with the war. The economy was not a major part of their platform, it was all about Iraq. Since they took over the economy has slumped and their promises to the anti war crowd have gone unfulfilled (not that I’m complaining about that).
Congress has the power to control spending, it is their Constitutional duty. They can blame the president but he signs or vetoes what they come up with. President Bush certainly added to the problem by losing his veto pen when his party was in power and spending increased. While he has found that pen, little has changed since Democrats took control. They continue to spend like drunken sailors on shore leave (my apologies to sailors). They are spending even more than the Republicans they criticized.
It is time for all Americans from both parties to band together and vote every incumbent out of office. I did my part and my Representative lost his primary. He will not be in office again and can cause no further harm (and he was a Republican). If you care for this country then vote them all out of office and let’s replace them with people who will do the job and do it right.
They refuse to pass a law limiting their terms but we have the power to do that ourselves by voting them out.
If we stay the course and add more Democrats to the rolls without replacing those who are already there we will get more big government and more spending which will lead to more taxes and further erosion of the dollar. Filling the place with Republicans without replacing the ones who are there will not be much different.
Source:
Yahoo Finance
1 The checks are not really rebates. A rebate requires a person to spend money in order to get a portion of it back. Many folks who are getting checks paid no taxes at all. The scheme is actually income redistribution.
Tags: big government, Democrats, Pelosi, revenue, slavery, spending, taxes