Thursday, 23 July 2009
Stimulus Package Fail, May be time for GRAPES
The President's Council of Economic Advisers released a report today detailing their forecasts for the job market over the next decade or so. In so much as its a joke, the unrealised caveat of the above forecast is that its over a 10 year period, which under the current administration we will all be living in mud huts, chucking spears at deer and foraging for wild berries and onions to eat if Obama and the Democrat Congress have their socialist way with the country.
Even as Americans still struggle to find jobs, put food on the table and make mortgage payments on up-side-down mortgages months after Obama and the Democrat Congress promised the stimulus would stop the blood letting in these markets. It came out today in US News that Obama and the Democrat congress' economic stimulus package has failed. Is it any wonder it failed when one considers where the money was spent.
Back in January I warned the American public that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 would fail, and fail spectacularly. I even wrote an open letter to Mr. Obama detailing exactly why the stimulus package would fail while offering an alternative stimulus package entitled GRAPES.
Harvard University economist and former Reagan adviser Martin Feldstein maintains that the money could have done more. "In the first stimulus, only about 25 percent was government spending," Feldstein says. "The other 75 percent [was] transfers to individuals, temporary tax cuts, or transfers to government. These had much less impact on GDP. If the nearly $800 billion dollars had been spent effectively, it would have done much more."
Stimulus money transferred to individuals?! Cronyism? Transferred to Government?! Uhh, did the Government get bailed out too?
With no real accounting of how this money was used, I would be remiss in my duty as an American to allow my congressmen to spend another $800 billion without accounting for the first package. Is it too much to ask of our leaders to be fiscally responsible and do the right thing? I guess not.
Lets take a deeper look at how congress wasted 800 billion dollars of our money. Keep in mind this is enough money to give every American household $10,000 dollars with a little left over to roll some dice down in the alley.
Basically from the chart on the left we can see that the democrats in congress did very little to help americans keep and get jobs.
I remember part of the sell on this package was all the jobs it would create in strengthening, rebuilding and renewing our infrastructure.
As you can see highway construction and public infrastructure only got 60 billion or less than 10% of the porkulous pie.
I'm no economist, but 60 billion is not even close to enough to help the 100 million Americans on the edge financially. My GRAPES plan would have helped everyone and the effects of its implementation would have been immediate. Maybe now congress and Mr. Obama are willing to consider a plan with merit and one that won't bail out the people who created this mess to begin with.
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