if we don't saddle our children with unprecedented levels of debt we may never recover. [rquoter]Obama warns of need for stimulus bill right away By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent Thu Feb 5, 9:40 am ET WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama warned on Thursday that failure to act on an economic recovery package could plunge the nation into a long-lasting recession that might prove irreversible, a fresh call to a recalcitrant Congress to move quickly. In an op-ed piece in The Washington Post, the president argued that each day without his stimulus package, Americans lose more jobs, savings and homes. His message came as congressional leaders struggle to control the huge stimulus bill that's been growing larger by the day in the Senate. The addition of a new tax break for homebuyers Wednesday evening sent the price tag well past $900 billion. Senate Democratic leaders hope for passage of the legislation by Friday at the latest, although prospects appear to hinge on crafting a series of spending reductions that would make the bill more palatable to centrists in both parties. Obama painted a bleak picture if lawmakers do nothing. "This recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse," Obama wrote in the newspaper piece titled, "The Action Americans Need." He rejected the argument that more tax cuts are needed in the plan and that piecemeal measures would be sufficient, arguing that Americans made their intentions clear in the election. "I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change," he wrote. His latest plea came on the same day the economy dealt with another dose of bad news: A massive jump in jobless claims and another round of weak retail sales. Initial jobless claims rose to 626,000, a 26-year high, the Labor Department said. And the number of claims by people continuing to apply for unemployment benefits reached a new record of nearly 4.8 million. The housing tax break was the most notable attempt to date to add help for the crippled industry and gave Republicans a victory as they work to remake the legislation more to their liking. "It is time to fix housing first," Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., said Wednesday night as the Senate agreed without controversy to add the new tax break to the stimulus measure, at an estimated cost of nearly $19 billion. Three swing-vote senators met with Obama at the White House on Wednesday to discuss possible cutbacks, but they declined to discuss details of their talks. Obama has made the legislation a cornerstone of his recovery plan. For their part, Senate Republicans signaled they would persist in their efforts to reduce spending in the measure, to add tax cuts and reduce the cost of mortgages for millions of homeowners. Officials figures were unavailable, but it appeared that the measure carried a price tag of more than $920 billion, making it bigger than the financial industry bailout that passed last year and as large as any measure in memory. Despite bipartisan concerns about the cost, Republicans failed in a series of attempts on Wednesday to cut back the bill's size. The most sweeping proposal, advanced by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., would have eliminated all the spending and replaced it with a series of tax cuts. It was defeated 61-36. Democrats also upheld a so-called Buy American provision that requires projects financed by the measure to be built with domestically produced iron and steel. But with Obama voicing concern about the provision, the requirement was changed to specify that U.S. international trade agreements not to be violated. Additionally, Democrats turned back an attempt to strip out a provision that Obama has said was essential. It would provide a tax cut of up to $1,000 for working couples, including those who do not make enough to pay income taxes. Isakson said the new tax break for homebuyers was intended to help revive the housing industry, which has virtually collapsed in the wake of a credit crisis that began last fall. The proposal would allow a tax credit of 10 percent of the value of new or existing residences, up to a $15,000 limit. Current law provides for a $7,500 tax break but only for first-time homebuyers. Isakson's office said the proposal would cost the government an estimated $19 billion. The provision was the second tax cut approved in as many days targeted to individual industries. On Tuesday, the Senate voted to give a break to consumers who buy new cars. The House approved its own version of the bill last week.[/rquoter]
basso doesn't mind pouring billions of dollars and thousands of lives down a bloody hole in Iraq to combat a non-existent threat, but he has a problem spending money to prevent the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression from becoming the worst economic crisis ever in U.S. history.
no, i'd have no problem with that, except that it's clear that no one charged with putting the stimulus together has the faintest idea of how, or even whether, it would work. it's turned into an opportunity for each congressman to get his pet project funded.
I am glad that you are not totally opposed to stimulus and making ignorant statements about it like Michael Steele. Can you name specifics on this? - I'd like to know which projects you are opposed to and why you feel the multiplier/demand stimulus effect on these projects is an insufficient ROI, and what projects you feel should be in there place. Thanks in advance.
obama painted a bleak picture? do you live in a hole. we're at the cusp of renaming the great depression, world depression I for god sakes.
Basso, could you answer SamFisher's question on which specifics? Maybe you can actually debate and discuss something for a change.
now the CBO says the stimulus would actually be harmful over the long haul. [rquoter]CBO: Obama stimulus harmful over long haul President Obama's economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing. CBO estimates that by 2019 the Senate legislation would reduce GDP by 0.1 percent to 0.3 percent on net. [The House bill] would have similar long-run effects, CBO said in a letter to Sen. Judd Gregg, New Hampshire Republican, who was tapped by Mr. Obama on Tuesday to be Commerce Secretary. The House last week passed a bill totaling about $820 billion while the Senate is working on a proposal reaching about $900 billion in spending increases and tax cuts. But Republicans and some moderate Democrats have balked at the size of the bill and at some of the spending items included in it, arguing they won't produce immediate jobs, which is the stated goal of the bill. The budget office had previously estimated service the debt due to the new spending could add hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of the bill -- forcing the crowd-out. CBOs basic assumption is that, in the long run, each dollar of additional debt crowds out about a third of a dollars worth of private domestic capital, CBO said in its letter. CBO said there is no crowding out in the short term, so the plan would succeed in boosting growth in 2009 and 2010. The agency projected the Senate bill would produce between 1.4 percent and 4.1 percent higher growth in 2009 than if there was no action. For 2010, the plan would boost growth by 1.2 percent to 3.6 percent. CBO did project the bill would create jobs, though by 2011 the effects would be minuscule.[/rquoter]
Republicans have been lying all week about the CBO - this has been well-covered by Media Matters http://mediamatters.org/issues_topics/search_results?qstring=cbo But assume this was true, and this was your actual concern, other than to just be a copypasting ignoramus; Anyway - you know what would make the stimulus less costly? You're not going to like the answer, because it's Republican fiscal policy 101, - It's the tax cuts, stupid. They deprive the government of more revenue than consumption they replace - they're the most wasteful thing about the whole package in terms of its stated purpose. Obama should just give up on the bipartisanship thing here - the country is too important to bend to the Grand Regional Party's disproven dogma.
sure, here's a few, courtesy of eleanor holmes norton: People-friendly Mall. Create café table settings for lunch. Rehabilitate restrooms and install flush toilets. Develop a program for free jazz, string quartets and similar entertainment during lunch hours. i'm as arts loving as anybody on this board, but i fail to see how many jobs a program of free jazz and string quartets is going to provide, although i do applaud the move toward flush toilets.
UH, you think parks renovate themselves and jazz players play for free? That is the very definiton of creating jobs. Way to Self-pwn. Again.
At public universities when a building is publicly funded a huge amount of cash has to be spent on "art" for the building. Just because it happens all the time does not make it right. Starving artists are better anyways.
While there was no doubt that the WPA contributed enormously to our culture I don't believe it did much for the overall economy.
scare tactics are effective, no matter who they come from. vote for change huh? Comical to think people believed that crap.
The Magical Ass compares Bush mobilizing the country to combat a non-existent threat in Iraq to Obama mobilizing the country to avert an economic catastrophe. Here's a free clue for you- Thoses Iraqi WMDs were a fantansy. The more than 3 million jobs lost over the last year are real. Looks like change to me.
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