Let's Call The Whole Thing Off

There is an old song that most of you are probably familiar with where the issue is the pronunciation of the words potato and tomato, and the point being that, since we can't agree, let's call the whole thing off. This is how I feel about the so called stimulus bill that is being rammed through Congress at amazing speed. The Democrats in Congress and the President call it stimulus, those of us who see through the nonsense call it out of control, pork barrel, Government spending which will stimulate nothing other than bigger and more powerful Government, so, let's call the whole thing off.

You also hear a lot about how this bill has no earmarks at all (although I think that some got added in the Senate, so I guess now they want to say, very few) but even that is misleading. Normally an earmark is added as an amendment to a bill, for an example, you have put forth a bill to make water filtration in your state better, and I look at you and say, OK, I'll support that as long as you support my amendment to build a bridge with my name on it in my home state. The bridge is an earmark. That's just one example, but hopefully you get the point. It's a process by which members of the House and Senate get all of their little pet projects taken care of. That did not happen to this bill, so technically saying that there are no (or maybe very few now) earmarks attached to this bill is true, but the reason for that is that the entire body of the bill is made up of funding for every body's little pet projects. So, in reality, almost the entire bill is earmarks.

They also like to claim that the bill includes tax cuts, but this is a flat out lie. The bill includes another refundable tax credit, meaning that people who make under a certain amount of money will get a check from the Government, regardless of whether or not they paid any taxes. This is very similar to the plan that was pushed by the Bush administration last year that simply didn't work. How like Government, it didn't work last time, so we're just going to go ahead and do it again, surely it will work this time, but of course, it won't. Here's why. Let's say you own a small business selling widgets, and everyone loves your widgets and really wants one, so the Government sends everyone these checks in the mail, and lots of people come down to your store and buy a widget, so business is great right after the checks come out. Now, according to what the Democrats are trying to sell us, because business is up, you're going to turn around and hire a couple more widget makers to keep up with demand, thus creating jobs. The problem with the plan is that you, as a small business owner, are not a moron. You understand that this uptick in sales is nothing more than a minor short term blip, so maybe you work some longer hours and pay the people you already having making widgets overtime for a couple of weeks to meet the demand, but once the checks from the Government stop rolling in, sales fall back to normal. The smart businessman will try to put some of these profits aside for a rainy day, but certainly will not hire more workers based on an artificial boom.

Real tax cuts, on the other hand, that is, allowing people to simply keep more of the money that they make, will cause a smaller, yet much longer term increase in sales, that will be sustainable over time and will cause you to need more widget makers in your business, thus increasing jobs.

Besides the false tax cuts, there is also the case of hugely increased spending in a large variety area's, and where is that money going to come from? Debt of course, that's the only place it can come from at this point. That means that we are putting our nation into a position that will require our grandchildren and great-grandchildren to pay that tab, and that assumes that we stop the out of control spending sometime relatively soon.

There are more problems with this bill, including the provisions moving us along the line toward Socialized medicine, which will, as I've explained before, amount to nothing more than the rationing of Health Care, with some Government bureaucrat deciding if you get the medicines and treatments that you need.

This is one of the worst bills ever to have come before Congress, and if it can still be stopped it needs to be. We simply can't afford to let it go forward.