Why I oppose the "stimulus"

I had a comment on an earlier blog which chided me for not realizing the strong need for a stimulus package. A quick stimulus package. They noted the unemployment figures and other data which could be fixed or helped with a stimulus package.

For me, the operative word is 'could'. Who knows if it will help.

We rushed through TARP 1 and it did nothing. It was a waste of billions of dollars. In fact, they can't even figure out where $78 billion ended up. Tomorrow, Monday, they'll be asking for TARP, part 2. I understand there's a TARP three in the works, too. Not to mention the huge omnibus package of even MORE spending totaling in the neighborhood of $410 billion. That's $410 BILLION above and beyond TARP and the trillion dollar stimulus package.

I saw a bit today where one of the Senators showed a graphic of a trillion dollars stacked, not end to end flat. It would wrap around the globe, the world, thirty-nine, 39, times. You've probably heard that if you spent a million dollars a day from the day Jesus was born until now that you STILL wouldn't hit a trillion dollars.

We're talking real money here. It's hard to grasp. It's even harder to imagine what printing up that much money with nothing to back it up will do to our economy a few years down the road.

Economists are split over whether this stimulus package will help, hinder or be neutral when it comes to alleviating the current problems we face as a nation. Those who think it might help are split over whether it will help enough, is overkill or timely.

It stands to reason that if the best minds of our day don't know the impact, Congress sure doesn't. If they don't know, rational thought would beg that they go slow. Another few days isn't going to put the economy over a cliff.

The stimulus package is full of programs that have nothing, nada, zip, to do with stimulating the economy.

Why not split out all the controversial stuff? Vote on those programs separately. Why not implement the things that 75% or more of the Senate can agree upon? Why not stick to Mr. Obama's own requirements of targeted and fast working (my paraphrase)?

The stimulus bill is full of NEW government programs that will have even more of the country on some form of "welfare". I don't think more government intrusion into our lives is the answer, I think it will create problems.

So much of what is being funded in this bill will require long-term maintenance. Most of it is not self-supporting projects, they do not create revenue, they need to be on continual life-support.

Almost everyone agrees this is going to create run-away inflation and when the bill comes due for the stimulus, we'll be in an even bigger hole.

I think we need some help. I just disagree with the help that's being offered. We do NOT need MORE government. The jobs being created should be private sector jobs, not government jobs. We don't need to fix up lawns, fund research, or do a large, large percentage of the things that have been stuffed into this gargantuan Christmas package.

I also think that what is REALLY going on here is that we're in the "honeymoon" period and the Democrats know this is the time to ram everything through they want. They have the perfect cover given the urgency of our economic problems. A month, two months, six months down the road the public will be watching and it will be hard to slide some of the things in this "stimulus" package past us.

If you'd like to find out more about what's in the stimulus package to here:

www.readthestimulus.org

Go here to take action against the stimulus package:

www.nostimulus.com
http://www.tcunation.com/ - links to the three Republicans who are voting FOR the bill
http://moveovermoveon.posterous.com - info on all Senators, info on the bill and ways to get involved in stopping