Pretty much. It’s nothing but a grandstand play so that Obama can have some re-election fodder. It sure as hell wasn’t going to create jobs.
I love this one. Conservatives don’t seem to understand that WW2 was a tax/borrow/spend govt program. And it took 50 years to pay off.
So by their own standards, it wasn’t worth doing.
I predict this: the split bills that cut taxes or spends money will pass and any bill that increases gov’t revenue will fail. We’ll have the same sort of great gov’t compromise of late last year when instead of extending unemployment benefits and paying for it (and more) by allowing some of the Bush tax cuts to expire, we get the disgusting compromise of extended the benefits AND extending the Bush tax cuts thereby increasing the deficit even further.
And it was paid for by enormous (temporary) tax hikes, especially on the rich.
There was 10s of billions of dollars for infrastructure improvements. If you throw that much money into the economy, you are going to create some jobs. That won’t necessarily lead to long term jobs, but the idea is that you hope and pray the private sector job increases will kick in when the money runs out.
It’s more than just a prayer. The private sector will respond to increased demand by hiring.
There were 51 “Yea” votes.
There is zero chance the Republicans want the economy to recover before the next election, not even a little bit. They are far better at politics than the Dems and they realize that if the economy starts showing signs of recovery they are doomed, so they will not allow anything that will accomplish anything.
This has nothing to do with political philosophy or competing economic models, it is pure 100% politics.
It wasn’t going to create jobs for the pure and simple reason that the Republicans weren’t going to allow it.
And just what do you think is the Republicans’ better idea, then? :dubious:
I do hope you can come up with something more than “Repeal Obamacare”, but I really don’t expect it.
Just cutting taxes and cutting spending got us out of the depression of 1920 in about a year.
Cutting taxes and spending after WWII led to one of the most prosperous periods in American history.
"Meaningful intervention by Hoover and later FDR perpetuated unemployment. Central planning did not work then. It won’t work now.
How people fail to learn from the past is an eternal joke on the human race.
So why don’t we go back to those tax rates?
First, never assume that because someone disagrees with you on one point that they are on the other wing of politics.
Political affiliation is a spectrum disorder 
By engaging in commerce and by doing the duty of government they can help, but it was the work of the populace that helped too.
I am still waiting for any evidence that politicians can spend money or cut taxes with the main INTENT of producing jobs and be successful.
Building roads, providing healthcare etc… obviously does produce jobs and in my “more liberal than most Democrats” selfish fashion I like that they provide services too.
These “jobs programs” seem to only be effective as a re-election tool.
I would rather the taxes not be lowered and have the money to keep more services afloat vs. using tax payer funds for a re-election campaign.
I am open to evidence that proves me wrong, and that using tax incentives produces jobs on a national scale. (tax incentives are good if you want to take jobs from a neighboring state IMHO)
The Republicans have no interest in getting the budget under the control; on the contrary, they have a long standing desire to rack up as much debt as possible while lowering revenue as much as possible, to “starve the beast”. And they would never accept any proposal that they thought might actually do some good and therefore reflect well on Obama. Any solution requires overcoming or getting around the Republicans, because they don’t want one. Cooperating with them will never work.
Because that would be a tax increase.
After the war, lowering the taxes was a boon. So how about we get out of the wars and lower the taxes?
Or at least provide some certainty with our tax code.
What are you talking about? Taxes weren’t lowered until after the 1945-1952 postwar boom, and they didn’t get substantially low until 1982.
It is not possible to be more wrong. Tax rates went down immediately prior to the Depression, and went up until they reached their highest point around 1945 (when most people agree the Depression had been over for awhile). Tax rates did not fall significantly until the early 1980s.
ETA: You actually thought the USA cut spending to fight world war 2? Was that a typo?
Seeing how your version of history conflicts with what actually happened, please take some time to research your statements of fact before you post them.
And yet, despite those onerous tax rates, we still sustained 16 years of “one of the most prosperous periods in American history”, as you described it. How do you explain that?
If history is any guide, we should learn that high tax rates are correlated with economic growth, and low tax rates are correlated with economic recession.
High marginal tax rates are the mechanism that corrects the flaw in unrestrained free market capitalism, and keeps the economy growing sustainably.
TL/DR
But I thought that this bill was funding a lot of state/muni jobs for only one year (police, teachers). Then they’d get whacked (and the GOP would be blamed) when the money ran out, or the states et al would have to come up with more money out of their own pocket.
This bill was never meant to pass. It was President Downgrade’s feeble attempt to score some political points and payback the unions who helped put him in there.
Those were not votes to pass the bill.