The House of Representatives passed President Barack Obama's "stimulus" package today. The Wall Street Journal analyzes this bill here:
In selling the plan, President [ Barack ] Obama has said this bill will make "dramatic investments to revive our flagging economy." Well, you be the judge. Some $30 billion, or less than 5% of the spending in the bill, is for fixing bridges or other highway projects. There's another $40 billion for broadband and electric grid development, airports and clean water projects that are arguably worthwhile priorities.
Add the roughly $20 billion for business tax cuts, and by our estimate only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus. And even many of these projects aren't likely to help the economy immediately. As Peter Orszag, the President's new budget director, told Congress a year ago, "even those [public works] that are 'on the shelf' generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to provide timely stimulus to the economy."
Only twelve cents of every dollar are on actual stimulus projects. No wonder the Heritage Foundation rebranded this "stimulus" bill as The Pelosi-Obama-Reid Trillion Dollar Debt Plan.
Exactly zero Republicans voted for this bill. Kudos to the two Representatives from Colorado who opposed this bill: Mike Coffman and Doug Lamborn. President Barack Obama did make this a bipartisan vote on the bill. After all, eleven Democrats voted with the Republicans against this bill.
In any event, the bill passed 244-186, a fifty-eight vote difference. Elections have consequences, and the consequence here is that the President and the Democrat House leadership can pass any bill with no Republican support whatsoever. However, they now have complete ownership of this expansion of government and the economic consequences thereof.
by Civil Sense
