An Old Kind of Politics: House Republicans blocking stimulus

From the Rachel Maddow show citing economy.com

$1 in food stamps leads to 1.75 spending

$1 infrastructure leads to 1.59 spending

$1 in personal tax cuts leads to 1.03 spending

$1 in corporate tax cuts leads to less than 1.00 spending.

Obama made an economic mistake by appealing to conservative GOP ideology by having so much as a tax cut in a stimulus bill.As far as infrastructure he should come back with another bill later. It is tough to combat 40 years of conservative ideology with mere facts.

 

And then we're gonna rape yer daughters.

 

Please take a class in economics so we don't have to wade through this type of uneducated garbage. Spending is one of many measures of financial health. I'm more concerned about job creation, corporate profits, liquidity in the credit markets, consumer confidence, investor confidence, and investments in productivity. Spending is one piece of the puzzle, but not the only piece -- especially when the Obama voters spend the money on booze and then go out and cause problems.

Taking your financial lessons from Rachel Maddow is like The_Conquistador taking BBQ'ing lessons from a vegan.

 

Seeing as spending is the only thing the government can directly control, I think this is a pretty good attempt to positively affect other aspects of the economy (credit markets, consumer confidence, etc). As long as people are not spending money, things will get worse. As long as people are losing jobs they will not spend money. It's a vicious cycle, and the government (one side at least) is doing all it can to shorten it.
And please, if you have an actual refute for the numbers posted above, namely that tax cuts are an inefficient way to stimulate growth, lets hear it.

 

Well, now I know where that $335 million in STD prevention will be applied.

 

God I hope Obama's plan work. I may not agree with it, but anything to **** over the GOP by 2010.

 

As a fiscal conservative (social liberal) I was expecting more robust stimulus bill with more infrastructure spending as I mentioned before. Where this one falls way short, is that there's all kinds of social program spending in it:

Did you notice that $127B of the $825B is allocated for health care programs? Also there's a ton in there for unemployment benefits and food stamp increases. That stuff should be a part of another bill, not an economic stimulus plan designed to help unfreeze credit markets and create jobs. The most effective use of this cash would have been to use it on large scale infrastructure programs on roads, bridges, and mass transit. Epic fail here.

 

Huge projects take a lot of time to get organized, it would be months before any of this money would have an impact. On the other hand, with unemployment rising, basic needs like food and healthcare are getting seriously strained in the most affected regions of the country. This bill is basically trying to balance the immediate relief with some longer-term impact, which seems very sensible. Now lets see how much of it actually works.

 

If you think about it, this recession should have started in 05 but the housing bubble pushed it back. I don't think there is anything the government can do save us.

 

Nope. That was the line in the sand. As you state, this will not be the last stimulus bill, transportation bill, ag bill, etc. There will be additional stimulus needed to pull us out of this hole. Now Obama can say, "Well, we tried compromising with the Repubs and it watered down the bill so much that it didn't have the effect we were looking for, plus they didn't even vote for it."

Repubs are cornered... and losing their appeal even in the South apparently...

This, along with the auto company posturing, is another nail in the coffin for Repubs in the Rust Belt.

 

I am glad the republicans aren't just agreeing to this bill and insisting congressional democrats work with them.

Heck - that's their freaking job! Can't just be made irrelevant. Dems can't just tax on anything.

How on earty is spending on contraceptive education going to help the economy more than tax cuts for small businesses???

Obama has to put pressure on Congress to work together and focus on STIMULUS. Not just pushing a democratic agenda. That was his campaign promise.

Cut out the pork and useless spending, lets focus on what actually stimulates economic growth...

Capital investment
Infrastructure
Consumer Spending
Hiring

These are the 4 pillars of the stimulous package - everything should be related to them.

 

This is where we differ on opinion. I don't see social programs such as unemployment benefits and food stamp increases as "economic stimulus" as they have minimal impact on GDP growth or job growth.

 

In theory, a thread could be started with the following title:

GOP refuses to help economy, sentences women and children to die.

Just sayin'

 

The extreme left has brought this country to where we are just as much as the extreme right. Keep laughing and pointing fingers. Party players like yourself is whats keeping this country where it is right now.

 

I'm glad they are against the stimulus but they're doing it for all the wrong reasons.

Rejecting a bad idea isn't divisive.

 

We don't need additional stimulus bills.

 

I had thought of how the 0% bi-partisanship displayed might hurt the GOP beyond the Bush deadenders, libertarian types and various other conservative ideololgues. Hopefully you are right.

 

Maybe. More certainly America is watching the Democrats take this country into bankruptcy.

I wonder what the new currency will be called? New Dollars?

 

What about the Blue Dogs? You know, all those deficit hawks that we elected in 2006, many of whom are rising stars in the Democratic Party (Salazar, Giffords, Gillibrand). Of 43 of them currently in the House, 6 voted against the bill.

Allen Boyd, Jim Cooper, Brad Ellsworth, Collin Peterson, Heath Shuler, and Gene Taylor are the real Blue Dogs. All the rest are Southern, Western, and/or rural Yellow Dogs.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/01/28/whatever-happened-to-the-blue-dog-democrats/