Bankrupting America

The Obama-Reid-Pelosi plan to plunge the United States into colossal debt has very little, if anything, to do with saving the economy from crisis. Right now Republicans should be doing every interview they can with the media and telling them that a pork-laden bill which has more spending on non-stimulus items than anything else is the last thing the country needs. The last thing that American taxpayers need. The US is supposed to be in crisis- and all Obama and his cohorts can come up with is a plan to funnel money to their pet-projects?

We’ve looked it over, and even we can’t quite believe it. There’s $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn’t turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There’s even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.

In selling the plan, President 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.”

This is not the hope and change you were looking for. Obama wants to spend $825 billion (or more than one trillion by the latest estimates) when a mere $90 billion would suffice for the bill's supposed aims? And we'll ignore for now the fact that this spending won't come in time to make a difference. He's been in office for a week and he's essentially bankrupting the nation- not out of necessity's sake, but because Democrats have gone on a self-indulgent spending frenzy that has no regard for the current economic climate, let alone any concern for the future stability of the nation.

Wow- if only some people had highlighted his complete lack of experience in running anything, his urge to redistribute wealth and his own pork tendencies before election day.

Oh, wait, we did.

One last thought- how long will pass before Democrats, ably aided by the media, re-write history to place the blame for the gargantuan deficit they're creating now at the feet of Republicans?