In Opposing Obama's Stimulus Bill, GOP Hopes to Return to Limited Gvt. Mantle

Yes. Obstruct.
Become even more irrelevant.

If you read this Bill ther is no way in Hell that it will work!!!!!!!!!!!

The 2003 "Jobs and Growth" Plan (Tax Cuts) Didn't Work
Larry Mishel on the effect, or more precisely the lack of any effect, of the 2003 tax cuts on "Jobs and Growth":

Tax cut approach has already been tried and failed as stimulus:...[The administration claimed t]he Bush tax cuts of 2003 ... would generate 1.4 million jobs on top of the 4.1 million jobs that were expected to be generated over the eighteen months following June 2003. See [here]...

EPI tracked the initiative’s effectiveness through a website, www.jobwatch.org, and found that it fell far short of its goals. Not only did the promised 1.4 million additional jobs not appear, but the 4.1 million jobs expected with no action also failed to materialize. In all, only 2.4 million jobs were created—1.7 million short of the administration’s projection without their new policy. Thus, by the Bush administration’s own metrics the tax cut program fell short by a total of 3.1 million jobs (149,000 pr month). For an analysis of how the Bush 2003 tax plan (The “Jobs and Growth" plan) fell short of its job claims see [here]...

On what basis can the conservatives who embraced those failed initiatives now claim that tax cuts are the best policy?

It seems Republicans have but one answer to every problem, get government out of the way through tax cuts and deregulation. When they are asked what caused it, whatever it might be, there is one answer, government. When asked how to fix it, whatever it might be, there is but one answer, reduce government through tax cuts and deregulation. For many, especially the politicians, it doesn't matter whether tax cuts will actually fix the economy, the goal is to reduce the size of government by any means, and they see this as an opportunity to do just that. If government is always the problem, then getting government out of the way is always the solution.

For many of the tax cut advocates on the right, this isn't really about job creation. Though job creation will get plenty of lip service, the right doesn't generally believe government intervention in any form, tax cuts or spending, is helpful as far as stabilizing the economy. They believe that cutting taxes can increase economic activity, reducing taxes gets the government out of the way and that will increase growth and jobs, but that is about the long-run and economic growth, it's not about stabilizing the economy in the short-run or about creating jobs to end a recession.

So the tax cut policy isn't really about stabilization policy. There could be jobs that are created from tax cuts, even in the short-run, but in its heart of hearts the tax cut policy is about cutting revenues at every opportunity in an attempt to reduce the size of government. If you doubt this, ask yourself what the right will argue when the economy starts to improve. Suppose we say at some point in the future, ok, now that things are better, it's time to increase taxes back where they were. What will we hear? What we'll hear is how raising taxes will kill the recovery, kill growth, cost us jobs, etc. According to this line of thinking, recessions are good times to cut taxes, but recoveries are horrible times to raise them (note, however, that this is wrong from a stabilization perspective - you should run a surplus in good times to cover deficits incurred in bad times). So once taxes ratchet down, it will be a fight to return them back where they started. That's because the real goal is not stabilization, with stabilization policy taxes would move freely in both directions, it's to reduce the size of government. And since the real goal is something besides stabilization, there's no reason to expect, and good reason not to expect, that the policy this group puts forth will be optimal (or even good) at providing short-run relief.

They already screwed this up once, the initial tax cut stimulus package put into place last spring was too small and poorly targeted, it had all sorts of problems all in the name of appeasing this same group - and here they are trying to muck up the process once again, to hold jobs hostage while they try to get tax cuts in place, even though something like 40% of the package is already devoted to tax cuts. Camel, tent, nose. I think it's time to stand up and say no, sorry, you lost the election, and not by just a little bit. You had your chance and look where we ended up - with a terrible economy, huge holes in the budget making it much harder to respond to the downturn, a financial sector wrecked by your anti-government, self-regulation philosophy, what is it about the past several years that would lead us to have any confidence at all you have the slightest clue how to manage a well-running economy instead of driving it into a ditch, let alone heal one that is broken?

Mysterious Traveller11:44AMJan 27th 2009
Yes. Obstruct.
Become even more irrelevant.
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So true.

I had hoped that the Republicans learned that their constituents want them to be VERY PARTISAN - I am a very conservative Republican, and want to fight this
horrible wave of Socialism that is starting to roll toward us - In just a week, it has become apparent that President Obama thinks that he is an old time King who can do anything he wants, and the public be
damned!!!!!!!!!!

The GOP hopes to return to limited government mantle? Wow, its been some time since they lived up to that one.
On another note, John Boehner really needs to stay out of the tanning bed. The dude is downright orange.

Sam
"In all, only 2.4 million jobs were created"
that's better then losing jobs by the thousands every day.

David S.,
LOLOL--love the comment on his 'color'.

PCL and Mysterious Traveller,
now that we have a one party rule, who will you blame when something goes wrong???????

Fannie & Freddie want $35 Billion more! $13 BIllion was not enough!

The company has already drawn down $13.8 billion of the $100 billion in federal funds made available to it when it was placed into conservatorship in September.

AOL PLEASE talk about whats going on behind closed doors, or on Friday afternoon when no one is looking!

What spin! Limited government ... the Republican mantle?? Good luck with that.

Kathleen Barnard, after 8 years of Bush and you "THINK" Obama is a KING? Pray tell, what do you think of BUSH?

God help us from Republican fixes of the economy! I believe that is what we have had for the past 8 years ... leading us from projected surpluses to record-breaking deficits ... leading us to a severe recession that went unacknowledged (in fact, it was strongly denied)for nearly a year ... leading us to confront the spector of a possible depression. Tax credits, tax cuts are not immediate, nor do they impact directly the pain experienced by those losing their jobs, their savings, and their homes. Better spent: job training/retraining, public infrastructure projects (already on the books, awaiting funding), money for hospitals, schools, elder-care, conversion to "green" technology (our future). Money should NOT be given to financial institutions, gargantuan corporations, rigid "old-school" institutions and industries ... that is simply public money burned. Individuals at the top of such hierarchical, pyramid structures are foolish, incapable, unethical, removed from reality, and simply have no conscious or intelligence to correctly spend the money in a way that will help dig us out of this mess. Their first loyalty is to themselves and their lifestyle; second, to their organization; and a very very low third is to anything that could remotely be defined as the "public good".

I see this is another "he did it, no he did it" blog.
We are dying as a nation regardless of who did what and when. Finger pointing doesn't fix a damn thing.
I don't see a problem in asking US as in we the people to tighten our belts and help.
We the people have too many credit cards, one or two too many cars and a few to many HD TV's in one home. That is if we have a home.
The I WANT IT NOW era has to end or it will be the end of US.
When is the last time you bought anything made in AMERICA...there sits the major problem in my eyes.
We get toys from China with lead paint and no one stops it.
They pay relatively no tax on anything the import here. Why?
That's income isn't it?
I found it amazing that rum imports coming into the USA pay taxes, almost $200 million and what does our government do.....they give it back. WHY?
Our country is in a different mind set with the economic crash, loss of jobs, loss of homes, bad loans and on and on...

I don't know, maybe a stimulus could work this time, people are frightened of loosing all they own, many already have. They are paying attention this time. But something has to be done and soon. No one has the perfect answer to this question, no one person possibly could, but if you don't try you won't know.
I'm scared of loosing my home, two of my grown son's have had to move back in with me because they lost their jobs...when will it end?

If anyone in here, an AOL blog has the PERFECT answer, let us all know.

In the past few weeks, I've heard lots of Republican talking heads make some pretty damning arguments about "liberal" Democratic economic policies and Barack Obama's "wasteful" spending plans. The arguments may sound convincing at first blush, but the Republicans aren't offering any serious alternatives. So I did some research and came up with a quick list of four things Republicans don't want you to know about the economy.

1. Tax cuts don't always work.

In 1929, Herbert Hoover cut marginal tax rates to the lowest level in modern history (24 percent) and the economy still collapsed. In 1982, Ronald Reagan slashed taxes to the lowest level in 50 years and, in return, unemployment soared to the highest level in 50 years. In 2001 and 2003, George Bush cut taxes twice and yet unemployment rose to 6 percent. And that's to say nothing of the 2.6 million jobs lost in the final year of the Bush administration.

Tax cuts are politically popular, but they are not a panacea for our nation's economic woes. Cutting corporate tax rates won't stimulate the economy or create new jobs if there's no demand for the goods and services that businesses produce. And cutting estate taxes and capital gains taxes will primarily benefit the wealthy. Despite the GOP claims to the contrary, when you give rich people money, there's no guarantee they will use it in ways that will trickle down to the masses. If we're going to cut taxes, then tax cuts should be targeted to businesses that hire new workers or invest in infrastructure, or they should go to middle-class Americans, who have been losing their jobs, their homes, their health care, and their savings in the Bush economy.

2. Higher taxes don't necessarily hurt.

Nobody likes to pay taxes, but don't believe the hype that tax increases on the wealthy will hurt the economy or kill jobs. In 1944, Franklin Roosevelt raised marginal tax rates to an astoundingly high 94 percent and yet we still had almost full employment (1.2 percent unemployment), thanks to the war. Taxes fell after the war, but in 1951, Harry Truman raised taxes again (from 84 to 91 percent) and yet unemployment dropped by 50 percent. In fact, from 1947 to 1973, median family income rose 2.7 percent a year, even while the top marginal tax rate was never lower than 70 percent, twice the current rate.

Perhaps the best example of the utility of tax increases comes from recent history. In 1993, Bill Clinton defied every single Republican in the House of Representatives and raised marginal tax rates to almost 40 percent. Despite GOP predictions that businesses would go bankrupt and workers would be laid off, the U.S. enjoyed the longest peacetime economic expansion in history.

That doesn't mean we need to raise taxes right now in the midst of the recession, but it does mean we shouldn't be afraid of higher marginal tax rates or of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire in 2010. Republicans often complain that higher taxes will kill the economy, but there's not much evidence to support those fears.

3. Democrats are better at balancing the budget.

Republicans love to talk about balancing the federal budget...when somebody else is in charge of it. But during eight years of the Bush administration, we hardly heard a whimper from Republicans about balanced budgets, even as Democrats complained about the huge cost of fighting two wars and cutting taxes.

The truth is that no Republican president in my lifetime has ever balanced the budget. But the Democrats have balanced the budget five times during the same time span. Clinton did it four times and Lyndon Johnson did it once. The last Republican president to balance the budget was Eisenhower.

Yes we do need to balance the budget eventually, but this is not the right time. To do so would mean cutting government programs that serve those most at-risk in society and it would slow down the chance of recovery as the lack of government spending would contract the economy. But still, if you really want to balance the budget, the Democrats, historically speaking, are far more likely to do it.

4. Democrats create more jobs.

Republicans love to crow about the Reagan economy, but it pales in comparison to Bill Clinton's record. The U.S. economy created 21 million new jobs in the Clinton administration. That's more than the last three Republican presidents, including Ronald Reagan, combined. And despite the GOP argument that the Republican Congress deserves credit for the Clinton economy, the truth is that seven million of those jobs were created in the first two years when Democrats, in control of both houses of Congress and the White House, raised taxes with virtually no Republican support.

But it's not just Clinton. Despite the well known economic woes the country faced under Jimmy Carter, the U.S. economy added 8 million new jobs from 1977 to 1980. That's more new jobs under 4 years of Carter than under 12 years of both Bush presidents combined. And for all the right-wing complaints about the failures of LBJ's "Great Society," they fail to mention that the economy created 10 million new jobs during Johnson's tenure, with a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, while fighting the Vietnam War and authorizing a massive expansion of the welfare state to include Medicare and Medicaid.

The truth is that nobody has all the answers to our current economic problems. But to believe Republicans lately requires us to forget the successful history of Democratic presidents and to ignore the failure of the most recent Republican president. It was George W. Bush, after all, who squandered the Clinton surpluses, ran up the biggest deficits in history and doubled the national debt.

While we embrace President Obama's spirit of bipartisanship and unity, Democrats should not forget their history and must not let the GOP browbeat them into silence and submission.

In 2010 the Dems will pick up enough Senate seats to have a filibuster proof Senate then roll over these scum sucking reepuke turds. They will be an irrelivant party with no power at all. Good ridence to the scum.........

Sam 1:45PM Jan 27th 2009

I agree, this country needs a lot of soul searching NOW.

I seem to have omitted my point above, as to the too many credit cards, cars, HD TV's, almost every TOY or extra no one really needed was bought on credit. We NEED to stop! If you don't have the cash, leave it in the store. It's one way to save yourselves from yourselves. It's old school, I know. But it worked for my parents and they did very well. Not one time during my childhood did they ever have a time when they couldn't pay their monthly bills. And my father was the only one working. There were 5 kids in my house.
You see, there were no credit cards then.

Keith2:02PMJan 27th 2009

In the past few weeks, I've heard lots of Republican talking heads make some pretty damning arguments about "liberal" Democratic economic policies and Barack Obama's "wasteful" spending plans. The arguments may sound convincing at first blush, but the Republicans aren't offering any serious alternatives. So I did some research and came up with a quick list of four things Republicans don't want you to know about the economy.
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Great information Keith, thank you.

The stimulus bill includes $4.19 billion for "neighborhood
stabilization activities."

The money was previously limited to state and local governments, but
Democrats now want part of it to be available to non-profit entities.
That means groups like ACORN would be eligible for a portion of the
funds.

Is that the same ACORN that is under investigation for voter
registration fraud ?

This is the Bush time line for his 8 years....we are still hearing the sucking sound and the "It wasn't me" statements. Set them at a round table and ask "then who is at fault for this economy" and they will start pointing fingers. In 30 seconds flat, you will have a full circle of "it was him".

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/bush/legacy/timeline/