From The Heritage Foundation:
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) asked the Congressional Budget Office to estimate the impact of permanently extending the 20 most popular provisions of the stimulus bill. What did the CBO find? As you can see from the table below, the true 10 year cost of the stimulus bill $2.527 trillion in in spending with another $744 billion cost in debt servicing. Total bill for the Generational Theft Act: $3.27 trillion.
$3.27 trillion. If I had a cat, I’d kick it.
This has passed insane and gone into criminal. I don’t know how to express in words how enraged I am. I’m having a hard time not personally blaming everyone I know who voted for Obama. This is inexcusable. This is disgusting.
This is the Democratic Party. Frak you very much.
{ 22 comments }
Kevin:
I think I used the $3 trillion number last week sometime. That’s about what I pegged from the beginning. And, like you, that is why I consider this to be the moral equivalent of the government sending thugs to mug my children and grandchildren.
But so long as baby boomers can keep buying fancy toys, I suppose all is well.
You may have used the $3 trillion number. I was still fuming over the $1.2 trillion I posted about earlier.
But $3.27 trillion? I mean, what do you call that? Robbery doesn’t even sound right. Criminal, I think, is closer. Treason? I mean, where do they get the right to do this? States fought tooth and nail giving Washington the money it needed to simply function as a effective government. How would those original states have reacted if Washington reserved for itself the power to tax the people and redistribute that money to private interests?
“Virginia? Franks’ Bank of Massachusetts ran itself into the ground. We’d like you to foot the bill. Thanks.”
I think the Civil War might have been fought a few decades earlier than it was.
At what point do we, as a people, say enough is enough? The ballot box isn’t working. When do we, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, refresh the Tree of Liberty with the blood of tyrants and patriots?
Have we reached that point? Your government is robbing us and our offspring. I understand maintaining a deficit economy but a point comes when deficit becomes bankruptcy.
So much for the theory that Democrats are less bad on fiscal disciple issues than Republicans.
Interesting that no one here wanted to water the tree a couple of months ago. Now, 20 days into a new admin and the world is coming to an end. Considering this is all based on assumption and the worst case scenario, it is moot to fume over it. Many economic forecasters forget that people are pretty damn unpredictable and that element of ‘economy’ and ‘government spending’ never changes. You can guess, but you can’t know whether or not these programs will become permanent.
Certain things were taken out of the bill. Be happy they didn’t just ram the bill into it’s original format down the line. With a few pork bribes this could easily have been accomplished. All those principled defenders of the American people would have taken the money and cast their vote. I guarantee it.
Yeah. Compared to this W. looked miserly! And, what, we’re only an month into the Obama Administration?
I feel compelled to note that when I read this:
I comprehend it as this:
Yes, the final bill was somewhat improved over the original bill. But for some reason I can’t find it in my heart to thank RINOs Specter, Snowe and Collins for helpint turn a mountain of garbage into a slightly smaller mountain of garbage.
(Short aside… It sure looks like Harry Reid rolled Nancy Pelosi on this, which was exactly the reverse of what I expected. I have to admit I am a little bit pleased it worked out that way, although we’re only talking on the margins of this thing…)
Is this the end of the world? I don’t know, if you do straight debt to GDP comparisons after this bill is passed, the US is not terribly out of line with other Western nations. But I’m not sure that’s a fair comparison, the US is NOT other Western nations and I worry that those other nations were able to run such deficit based economies in part because the United States, the LARGEST economy on earth, kept things from a global tipping point.
I can intellectually appreciate the arguments in support of some sort of spending/tax cut bill, although I find much that is in THIS one completely indefensible. But emotionally I find this to be the economic rape of two generations to ease the burden of one generation.
I love how Obama continues to try to blame this on Bush even as news from Europe demonstrates how their situation is generally much more dire than our own. Somehow Bush was driving German, British and French economic policy I suppose. Common sense tells me that whatever impact Bush had on the scope of this situation, he had little to do with its direction. I also grin each time Obama solemnly pontificates on “the mistakes of the past eight years.” That’s a mantra that is already wearing thin and with the adoption of THIS bill, if he is saying that in three months, people are simply going to laugh in his face. Especially considering how many of Bush’s policies he is continuing. (or, as in the case of this bill, accelerating).
jrogge, if you actually believe that the majority of those top 20 items will not become self-perpetuating under a Democrat controlled White House and Congress, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind purchasing the bridge I own in Brooklyn, it’s a nice bridge, and doesn’t have too many liens against it.
I tend to agree with the CBO on this. This bill will in the end have a fairly minor but negative impact on the nations GDP, and the additional debt it will generate will be the primary cause for that drop. But this bill in and of itself will not turn the USA into a socialist state.
If so Obama wouldn’t have much left to occupy himself in office. And I can guarantee you that if you think this is the LAST time we conservatives will be crying from the mountaintops, you better open your eyes.
In spite of all that, I am not yet ready to build a bunker and start refreshing the tree of liberty.
Not yet. But I just got my bonus, and I’ve got my eye on a little 9mm number that will probably find a home soon…
Oh, and jrogge, if you go back and review my comments about the TARP bill, I think you’ll find that I was as critical of the Bush administration for that travesty as I am the Obama administration for this one.
I really don’t know what to say about what looks to me like hyperventilating hysteria on the right.
Factor in inflation, and the size of the economy, and this isn’t “generational theft.” Jeebus. It’s the equivalent of a family with a net worth of around $130,000 taking out a bridge loan of about $30,000 to help get through a couple of bad years Maybe they shouldn’t take such a loan, you can argue that one way or the other. But generational theft and/or rape? Really?!?
At numerous points in our history, we’ve spent way more than this, once you adjust for GDP and inflation. Indeed, so far as the founding fathers are concerned, guys like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton all wound up spending *huge* sums for their time and day. Jefferson especially. So I’m not quite sure why anyone thinks running up huge national deficits would have caused a civil war; the founders DID run up a huge debt. In fact, taxes were higher AFTER the U.S. won independence than it was before; Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Franklin, and all the others who fought because they were mad at British taxation, wound up giving us higher taxes than we’d ever paid to the Crown.
You guys really need to calm down.
Dean:
I think I was clear in saying that I can intellectually appreciate what you are saying and can even contemplate how this brings us more in line with other Western nations.
But I am simply being honest about what it FEELS like.
Understand?
Yeah, well, I guess I can’t make you feel different.
To me, this also seems to play on the same mind trick that the left (including most of the working press) used and/or fell for, by regularly declaring that “casualties are mounting” in Iraq. The thing is, as long as there’s any casualties at all, then casualties will ALWAYS mount. They don’t go down (duh).
Numerous times during the conflict they were reporting casualties as “still mounting” even though on average they were trending quite clearly downward.
This also reminds me of the hysteria that terrorism works on; people would use as proof that Iraq is a failed disaster the fact that someone somewhere in Iraq had committed a suicide bombing today. I saw people doing that all the time: another suicide bomb today in Iraq, when are we going to admit failure and leave?!?
Never mind the hard empiric reality of how very few people were actually hurt. Nope, all the terrorists needed was one splashy explosion in the press, and Americans would start talking about leaving.
This stimulus package isn’t just about our being in lines with other nations, Cosmic. It’s also in line with what the U.S. has historically done many times before.
This is not unprecedented. It is not hugely out of control. Our children are not going to be ground into hamburger or find themselves selling their kidneys for cash. That’s outright hysteria, dude.
Actually, CC the “Tree of Liberty” remark was in response to Kevin’s mentioning of Tyrants and Treason which is an exaggeration to say the least. Also, I have good news. The “past eight years” mantra will fade as soon as most people forget about Bush, which I guess will be a year or two tops. Yeah TARP, I am not sure which sort of Republican Bush is, but he wasn’t the kind I think we were used to. history will point that out I believe.
In any case there is a time an place for tax cuts and supply side economics and there is also a time and place for spending. Spending will inject money into the economy faster but has less long term growth. No tax cut or spending bill addresses the issues that actually are driving this recession. I don’t believe the bill was intended to do something long term so it should do what it is supposed to do.
I don’t believe one way or the other on the issue of policy perpetuation. There is no way of knowing, you can only assume. Congress could flip Republican again in 2010 or 2012. This could happen assumably if the bill is as bad as they say it is. In any case the perpetuation of Bush policies, I believe, was a cookie thrown at the Republican party to begin with. Regardless, this will come as less of an expense to the American people as it is being made out to be. I only take a small amount of stock in GDP figures because of the fact GDP does not cover: how many people are employed, the number of companies producing goods, the ‘black economy’, the ownership of assets and investment, and income distribution to name a few things. All of these things account for the properity of the people in a given region, not just the GDP or PPP. So the GDP to deficit comparisons leave a little to be desired when trying to use that as a general picture of how the economy is doing.
I would like to see things happen that allow small business to compete with larger corporations, allowing for more competition, jobs, lower prices on goods, and possibly more profitable companies with less overhead. Understandably this bill does not address that, neither does a ‘free market’ approach. The ‘free market’ is exactly what keeps small businesses from competing. Small businesses get squeezed out because there is nothing protecting their interests and it is not in the large corporation’s interest to let them compete. So, while the spending model isn’t exactly the best solution; the old solutions of deregulation and cutting taxes are similarly antiquated.
So yes, sadly all we have is this band-aid. Deregulation and tax-slashing have now proven themselves to be only a different band-aid. We have had 40 years of band-aids so now we’re bleeding everywhere. But, we need another band-aid now so here it is. Now will we try and cure the problem after this or will we keep throwing more band-aids on this? We shall see.
Dean:
I think you have to admit in reading my posts that I have been vocal in my opposition to this bill, but have not been one of those claiming it’s the end of the world. In this very thread I made many of the points that you are making, so you are lecturing the wrong conservative.
I do “get it.”
And as I have said many times, I would be fully behind this bill if it truly addressed what it is supposed to. I have to be honest and admit that I have not seen the final version of the bill, and maybe it is better than I feared. It’s smaller anyway. But as long as it has massive amounts of liberal wet-dream spending in it under cover of the need to “avoid catastrophe”, I’ll be critical of it. Even if that is only 10% of it. It should have ZERO percent pork if this is truly the crisis Obama/Reid/Pelosi are claiming it to be.
But since you are in the mode of criticizing people for running around like Chicken Little, you have to be at least intellectually honest enough to admit that Obama and his buddies are the WORST examples of that, claiming that we have to pass the largest spending bill in US History in DAYS, UNREAD and UNDEBATED.
If anyone is sowing panic and using it to gain political advantage, it’s Obama/Reid/Pelosi.
jrogge: Yeah, I think the tree of liberty thing is a little over the top too, although I have a vague memory of making a similar reference in my Jefferson quotes comment, so I can’t give Kevin too much grief for that from my own seat without at least appearing to be hypocritical. And I think that in general the criticisms of me may be accurate about me being a jerk, but I don’t think I’m a hypocrite.
As far as policy perpetuation is concerned, I just review history and note that we have had numerous Republican adminstrations and Congresses since the New Deal, but virtually everything Franklin (and Johnson after him) put in place is still in place today. I just know that politically it is VERY hard to terminate a program once it is in the budget. That’s just political reality, not partisan bickering.
-sdg
Whither all this whining? President Obama’s bill contains the largest tax cut in history. And the spending is still less than the Iraq War. This sudden conservative fascination with balanced budgets and “generational debt” is rather convenient.
A refundable tax credit is a handout administered by the IRS, not a tax cut. And even if it were, you’re not correcting for inflation or economic growth in declaring this to be the largest in history.
The financial burden of goverment is a combination of total government spending and effective marginal tax rates (the amount of additional taxes you pay if your income goes up one dollar; deadweight loss due to taxation is proportional to the square of the effective marginal tax rate). Total goverment spending is going *way* up. And since most of the new tax credits phase out around $75,000/year in income, effective marginal tax rates are going way up for much of the upper middle class.
A refundable tax credit is a handout administered by the IRS, not a tax cut.
is this a distinction that matters?
ok, adjust for inflation and you still get a bigger tax cut than President Bush’s cuts.
is this a distinction that matters?
Absolutely. It matters because it’s marginal tax rates that determine the burden of taxation on the economy. It matters because it’s nonsensical to talk about giving a tax cut to someone who doesn’t pay taxes. It matters because of the conceptual difference between everyone keeping more of their own money, or certain people getting a check from the goverment for doing or being something the government approves of.
ok, adjust for inflation and you still get a bigger tax cut than President Bush’s cuts.
I rather doubt that. I’m to lazy to run the numbers, but I think 1.1 trillion 2001 dollars + 550 billion 2003 dollars adds up to more than 292 billion 2008 dollars.
bush’s tax cuts were 1.1 trillion in 2001? i dont think so. this is wher ei am getting my data from:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123111279694652423.html
$174 billion in 2001, then $231 billion in 2004/5 for the Bush cuts.
the Obama tax cuts are $282 billion, so bigger than either of the two batches by Bush. of course if you add Bush cuts together then its larger but 43’s two rounds were not passed as a single legislation.
oh, i suppose ifyou count the tax cuts under the full ten year window, then bush’s were bigger, but of course the actual cost was less.
My dollar figures were the reported 10-year figures, which I believe is the best comparison in the absense of a good way of estimating the permenant net present value.
You (and WSJ) are comparing the first two years of a phased-in long-term tax cut to the total cost of a front-loaded temporary package — most of the “tax cuts” in the spendulus will sunset after a year or two.
I wouldn’t call a tax credit a handout if it has the stipulation that you owe in taxes to receive it. The housing tax credit, for example, is non-refundable and stipulates you have to owe taxes that year. Being non refundable it only allows credit up to what you owe and no more. For first time homebuyers, it is the effect of an extremely large tax cut. Now, if the credit is refundable then we have a handout but this is not the case. The old credit is refundable but is considered a loan to be repaid. The new one is not, but only gives $7500 to those who may have owed that in taxes. I specifically targets the middle class, but offers a benefit to everyone. Well, it did since there are income caps set to the new one because of negotiations. It was also 15,000 originally as well. The credit also has to be claimed if I remember correctly so you will pay for it in the following year. So you get a hit on it that bounces back.
The 2 year sunset on the tax cuts may not be necessarily bad. Remember that the Laffer curve works both ways. The only way to prove the optimum is through trial and error unfortunately.
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