Curious? What got CUT from the Stimulus bill

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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President Obama’s Stimulus bill passed the House and Senate and will now go to his desk to be signed. Even with billions of dollars cut from the bill to appease Republicans, not one Republican in the House voted for the Stimulus, and only 3 Republicans in the Senate voted for it (Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania).

According to CNN, here’s what was cut. Children especially were hit hard by the “family values” crowd:

Head Start/Early Start, No Child Left Behind funding, school construction, Health Prevention, distance learning (for rural students), school nutrition, broadband. Education, we don’t need no stinkin’ education!

Oh, and Republicans the party of law and order? Yeah, right. Law enforcement wireless, FBI construction, detention trustee, federal prisons, state and local law enforcement, Cross Agency Support, Coast Guard, Neighborhood Stabilization.

God, don’t even get me started on the science cuts.

Some of these things I don’t know what they are, I just haven’t researched them yet. DHS? TSA? HIT Grants? CSERES research? SD salaries? aquaculture? NIST? Marshalls Construction? BYRNE Formula/Competitive? GSA/operations?

Now, maybe all of this wasn’t actually needed now, and maybe some will still get money from future stimulus bills, but almost all of these things would have provided or saved jobs. Almost all of these things would have benefited ordinary Americans in one way or another. Yet, and I repeat myself, even with these billions of dollars cut from the bill to appease Republicans, not one Republican in the House voted for the Stimulus, and only 3 Republicans in the Senate voted for it. Bipartisanship my ass. I hope a lot of those who voted no are voted out come time for their re-elections.

Yeah, it’s a lot of money, but it’s a pittance when you add up the cost of what’s been spent on the unnecessary Iraq war, and what’s been given to banks that’s been spent on bonuses and parties and who knows what all.

Head Start…man, how petty can you get?

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Ooh, Ooh, can I play along, I know what was cut, stimulus, thats what was cut out of the stimulus bill.

I can tell you things that weren’t cut, freebies, more earned income credit, you know what earned income is, money I earned, I’m so sorry you have 14 children, but I understand how expensive it is when egg and sperm come together I am pretty aggravated for paying for other peoples lack of understanding of the concept.

More food stamps, GREAT, an even greater incentive to not be productive.

More welfare, perfect, lets produce an entire country of people that won’t work, or be productive.

The way the world used to work

WORK(actually do something), get money, spend it.

The new way.

Do Nothing(breed), get money, spend it.

Just like government, do nothing, steal money, spend it.

I’m not a purely cold hearted bastard, I’m all for helping people get a leg up(I don’t want poor people running around, they steal my stuff), but I’ve seen it far too much, its sick disgusting and encouraged, and now more encouraged.

You want a stimulus, quick and easy and rewards the people that bust their ass day in and day out. Raise the standard deduction to $50k. Change the tax tables quick, and a whole huge more amount of money in the hands of the people that will actually spend it.

This isn’t stimulus, its crap, lets spend our way out of being broke, and I do understand that some deficit spending is needed occasionally to get things moving, but this is just a bloated pile of crap.

As for voting people out that voted no, I’ll vote my reps out for voting yes, even if I’m voting for Adolf Stalin Kahn Bush.

I truly had high hopes, but I think I’m going to go get sterilized so that none of my offspring has to pay for this crap.

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Equipoise, your arguments are mutually exclusive. You can’t blame the Republicans for what got cut, then turn around and blame them for not voting for the package with the cuts that were made.

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Color me ignorant, but I’m not clear on how a lot of that stuff fits into an “economic stimulus” bill in the first place. Isn’t the main point of the bill to save jobs affected by the recession? How is a federal fleet of hybrid vehicles going to promote that goal?

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that the federal government is looking to go hybrid. In fact I think there should be additional funding for pretty much all the stuff on the list. I’m just not convinced that the stimulus bill was the best place to do it.

Let alone the incredibly vague stuff like “$50 million for exploration.” What does that even mean? Hey Washington, I can underbid this figure significantly. You give me only $5 million, and I will explore like crazy. Seriously, I will explore my ass off for you. Cut me a check and I’ll start today.

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Auto giants are suffering because sales are down. Now how does buying cars help? Seems pretty direct to me. Buying green cars further pushes them to where they should already have been. Probably too small to help but at least this admin is pointed into the future.

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I’m guessing environmental items like money for a fleet of hybrid vehicles are in there to encourage spending on hybrid technology and development. Or something. I also think that maybe a number of items on the bill were there as door-in-the-face (or is it foot-in-the-door?) distractions. That is, the White House realized the likelihood of some of these items being accepted by Repubs was low, but there’s only so much Congress can cut without looking ridiculously douchey. Some items were there to be cut so that other items might live.

Also, shouldn’t this be in Great Debates or possibly the Pit. I don’t think the stimulus bill is very mundane or pointless. Well, I hope it isn’t pointless.

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I guess that makes sense. Although the auto industry just got several billion dollars in bailout funds like a month ago didn’t they? If they’re still losing jobs, an extra $300 million isn’t going to do much either way. I guess the government’s cars need to be paid for somehow though.

Washington: my federal exploration proposal will undoubtedly require a hybrid exploration vehicle. A flashy new one, with all the bells and whistles. You can kill two birds with one stone here! Funding me will help to save jobs in Detroit. It’ll also benefit the shag-carpeting, flake metal paint and titanium wheel rim industries, because I’ll want to get that baby all pimped out.

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Aha! The Helicopter Gambit!

(A screenwriter’s ploy I heard of somewhere, from a fellow who wrote documentaries for local access cable. He said that he always wrote his scripts to include an aerial shot filmed from a helicopter. Then when the script was passed on for approval, the person in charge of budgeting the show would nix the helicopter expense; and since they’d saved a lot of money by doing so, they wouldn’t feel the need to cut anything else. So the budget guys were happy and the screenwriter got everything he really wanted to begin with).

Come to think of it, I may have read about the Helicopter Gambit on the SDMB. If so, sorry for mangling your anecdote, whoever you are.

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Look, I know the idea of helping poor people may be repugnant to you, but the fact is that food stamps are the single most effective form of stimulus. If we give an investor a break on his capital gains, he’ll probably save that money. But as he has enough to invest, he doesn’t have to spend it. But if you give money to a poor person in the form of food stamps, he’ll absolutely spend it. Virtually all food stamps are redeemed. They are taken into local stores to buy food, helping retailers, wholesalers, food processors, farmers - a huge swath of people and businesses. Moody’s estimates every single dollar spent on food stamps generates $1.73 in economic benefit to the country as a whole. Here’s the chart by itself.

Extending unemployment benefits, again something probably very annoying to you (until you lose your job), provides the second greatest cost:benefit ratio. Keeping working people who have lost their jobs from becoming homeless and having them continuing to eat, consume and look for jobs is a good thing, especially if you (in the words of Lloyd Dobbler): “…sell anything, buy anything, or process anything…sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed.”

Giving money to people with little money results in those people spending the money…which is what you want when you want stimulus.

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Hahahaha. Yeah, a lot of this stuff is so vague, who can say where the money would really wind up?
I think all the money spent on the war and the prior billions in bailouts are great examples of how merely throwing around a lot of money isn’t necessarily going to help the economy, so I hold nothing against people for scrutinizing whether these projects are really the best use of the money right now and will actually be effective for the purpose of stimulating economic growth (it’s quite possible that these things may be worthwhile projects, but aren’t important enough to economic recovery that they should be priorities for now).

Saying that anyone who questions spending more money on Head Start must not care about children or education is about the same as telling anyone who questioned infringements on civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism that they hate America. :rolleyes:

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Last I read:

Medicaid for people on unemployment who don’t have COBRA didn’t make it. A COBRA subsidy of 60% for nine months did (it was originally 65% for a year, I believe).

Also $2400 of unemployment $$$ federal tax free.

Let me know if I’m wrong–I’m especially interested in these since my company is going out of business and by April I will be out on my butt. We’re being phased out and some people are leaving this week…

Have no idea the provisions to actually collect on this. The unemployment, I assume, will be dealt with on my 2009 income tax. The COBRA, ??? Would be nice if I didn’t have to dish it out first… that’s assuming I can even afford it.:frowning: