How Stimulating! Dem package could top $700 billion

Facing an increasingly ominous economic outlook, President-elect Barack Obama and other Democrats are rapidly ratcheting up plans for a massive fiscal stimulus program that could total as much as $700 billion over the next two years.

That amount, more than the nation has spent over the past six years in Iraq, would rival the sum Congress committed last month to rescuing the country's financial system. It would also be one of the biggest public spending programs aimed at jolting the economy since President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.

Hints of a hefty new spending program began emerging last week. New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (D), an Obama adviser, and Harvard economist Lawrence H. Summers, whom Obama has chosen to lead his White House economic team, both raised the possibility of $700 billion in new spending. Yesterday, Obama adviser and former Clinton administration Labor secretary Robert Reich and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) also called for spending in the range of $500 billion to $700 billion.

 

I feel stimulated. How about you?

The only glimmer of a silver lining is that Obama is apparently reconsidering his pledge to roll back the Bush tax cuts. Bully for him. I guess he isn't as dumb as he made himself out to be during the campaign. But I wonder how long he will be able to keep that pledge when trillion dollar budget deficits start showing up on the national balance sheet?

Just where will the government largess be directed?

The plan would include new funding for public-works projects to repair the nation's crumbling infrastructure, as well as a fresh infusion of cash to promote green technology and alternative-energy sources. It also would include targeted tax cuts for working families, students, the elderly and job-creating businesses that Obama touted on the campaign trail.

"Tax cuts" for those who don't pay any taxes at all is, despite the straight faced denials of Democrats, is welfare. If the Democrats want to give away money to some people why not call it what it is? Why the subterfuge of calling it a "tax cut?"

Politicians are funny sometimes, aren't they? Especially when they lie through their teeth.