You know, I can see their point about some of these. Tax breaks for Hollywood to buy film? But they are also objecting to fire control on Forest Service lands, flood reduction projects along the Mississippi, and rural waste control projects. Is there any sense to this list? Would anybody like to step up and defend the desire to cut most of these projects? I’d like to know the logic behind the GOP’s stance, and why they consider “greening” Federal buildings “wasteful.”
Not a republican, in fact im a pretty hardcore democrat, but i agree all of those should be cut. The reason is simple, they have absolutely NOTHING to do with economic stimulus so theres no reason why they should be there. Seriously, just reading that list pissed me the hell off, the question should be how can anyone support any of those things being part of an economic stimulus package?
Why aren’t projects like this economic stimulus? The government pays the workers, who then have money to spend on goods and services, which feeds into the economic system further. It should be at least as much of an economic stimulus as feeding money into under-capitalised banks, or giving tax cuts.
I’m sorry but i don’t buy it, you could call basically anything “economic stimulus” if you go by that. I think most of those projects are worthy and should be discussed and passed on their own merits, but certainly not as part of this bill.
I wonder how many of the Republicans protesting those expenses voted to create the DHS in the first place.
I’m leery of stimulus packages in general because I’m not at all convinced they do much good; regardless of who is supporting them (and in recent history both a Republican and now a Democrat President have pushed stimulus packages.)
Precisely because of the argument Giles just made. If we view “all government spending” as money that eventually results in dollars floating into the economy and thus “stimulus” then I don’t see the need for a stimulus package in the first place, just do a normal budget and up spending by a trillion dollars or so.
I can definitely agree that some of the stuff the GOP opposes are good programs that may deserve funding. But my first reaction to such things is not to say “then let’s fund it!” there are lots of stuff that deserve funding, we’re already deep in the red so that shouldn’t be our only criteria as to whether we throw money at something or not.
Unfortunately, while the GOP didn’t sign off on the stimulus bill recent history has convinced me that my own party is no more fiscally responsible than the Democrats. I’m fully convinced that whoever is in power is going to pump hundreds of billions into things that on the face of it probably should not be funded by taxpayers.
Then what would you spend money on to provide anb economic stimulus?
Or is the argument that the government should not try to stimulate the economy out of the curent recession?
The point of the bill is to stimulate the economy, not to fund anything and everything that might need funding, of which there is an unending supply. Perhaps they’d prefer more focus on areas where there is an expected return. Some things that come to mind are infrastructure improvements such as increasing high-speed internet availability (which IIRC was expected to get way more than it actually did), federal highway upgrades/repairs, etc. I would think Amtrak would fit into this category, but they’ve been historically opposed to funding it.
Probably nothing, because I don’t think economic stimulus packages like this are the best way to go about things.
If I was to do something like this I’d probably just send out $900 billion in gift cards, redeemable at any type of merchant in the country but ineligible to be put away in savings or used to pay off existing debt and I’d probably give them a 36 month expiration date. Give one to each taxpayer and that’s around $6500 each, that would definitely do something to stimulate the economy in a very direct and meaningful way.
Yes, and I can also see that the sum total of their point is about $4 billion out of $800 plus billion.
That’s doesn’t even amount to small potatoes. They’re just bitching about this stuff because they want president Obama to fail, even if he takes America with him.
But as others have mentioned, this won’t work either. People just use the gift cards and save the wages they would have used to buy stuff with anyway. All it would really do is increase saving, which isn’t really what we need right now.
I think most of the “construction” type items on the list would be stimulating, in that they would get people working, with associated spending.
Many of those monies are not meant to be spent in 2009, or even 2010. That Obama administration themselves have conceded that something like 25% of the money isn’t going to be spent for quite awhile; others’ estimates are much higher.
However laudable a cause, it’s simply dishonest to say that spending money for a project that will start in 2011 or 2012 is a “stumulus.”
The stimulus package doesn’t have enough money for true infrastructure investment.
Doubtful, I don’t see most Americans putting away $6500 in savings to “offset” a $6500 gift card. I see most Americans buying big screen TVs and using their normal wages as they are currently using them (meaning I don’t expect they’ll increase their savings substantially.) I think there’s strong evidence people are impulsive.
Either way, it’s a direct infusion of money however it ends up getting spent. All $900 billion of which will be spent in the next 36 months, which is more than you can say for the current stimulus package. Stuff like greening Federal buildings could be in the “planning process” for several years before it gets fully underway, and the money will simply be tied up and unused.
To a certain extent, all government spending can be considered “economic stimulus”, provided it brings money into the economy from outside.
Which means defict spending and money borrows from those who still have some.
That would be China.
Now people can go back and forth about what sort of spending provides the most stimulus, and argue about “multiplier effects” and whatnot.
But at the end of the day, the idea is to ameliorate the damage done by a whole truckload of money vanishing out of the economy overnight.
You have to bandage the wound and keep the patient stable until the economy can grow and thus heal the damage on its own.
Possbly true, but to me, the sad thing is that it takes something like this to get people to be willing to invest in infrastructure in the first place. There’s a lot of places where things fell apart for a lack of a small investment, and now it’s going to be far more expensive to fix them.
But infrastructure investement isn’t “sexy” or “exciting”, and roads don’t vote, so when the people are crying out “Balance the budget!”, politicians are all too happy to cut the wise but long-term spending in favour of flashy things that sound good in a press release but don’t really fix anything.
But at least they were shown to have Done Something.
Because… Someone should Do Something About This!
And hey, sure things will fall apart someday, but we won’t be in power then, so it’s someone else’s problem.
I don’t consider $4 billion to be small potatoes. I think we need to carefully consider every dollar we spend.
I’m not bitching about it because I want Obama to fail but because I want the stimulus to succeed.
I love Obama, but on this he is wrong. All the money should be carefully targeted to stimulate the economy the most for the least amount of money.
It depends on the project. If it’s already set up and ready to go, just waiting for guys to come in and pour concrete, sure. But most major projects require years of advance planning.
Think about building a road: You have to acquire the land and plan the route, do environmental-impact studies, study the drainage and the weather and the specifics of the site you wanna build on (every time that road runs over a creek, an architect has to design a bridge), run it past various regulatory agencies (not known for speed and efficiency), put the various contracts up for bid and go through that process. Then, if we assume the contractor is going to hire a bunch of people to do the work (which is sort of the point of the whole exercise), we have to allow time for the hiring process.
You take my point. The first few stages employ only a handful of engineers and white-collar guys. If you are given a billion dollars to build a road today, it’s still going to be years before you’re hiring anybody who lifts shovels for living.
That’s pretty much all this is, from that POV.
There’s a good case to be made, though, that the economy-stimulating expenses will have to go over several years, that this recession isn’t just a hiccup, the disease runs so deep that simply popping an amphetamine pill won’t cure it. A good infrastructure project that starts in a year or two might be more useful than a crappy giveaway right now.
But you do have to look at multiplier effects as well as volume of dollars. I don’t see any of the critics doing that, just going after their customary bugbears.
The problem with infrastructure is that it is slooooooow. Do you know when we finished building Eisenhower’s interstate system? 1992. How about the Big Dig? That was a “shovel-ready” project.
Even assuming there are projects that have already been planned in sufficient technical detail, there is a whole process of regulatory approval that takes ages. We could waive all of the regulatory requirements, but then you exponentially increase the likelihood of a boondoggle environmental disaster.
The end-goal of infrastructure is great. Some of these things, like expanding train service could really save companies millions more than it costs to build the project. But as a means of stimulus, it will take some truly superhuman efforts to get that money intelligently spent in time without creating a Big Dig-style disaster.