Stimulus Interruptus

« on: January 28, 2009, 09:09:19 AM »

TonyBlair

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This thread is on the heinousness of the Democrat Stimulus Plan. I was thinking about putting it under crime and corruption...but either way it will drive another nail in the coffin that is burying the US Constitution.

The European Social Welfare State Bill [Jim Manzi]

Let’s start with some basics about the stimulus bill (H.R. 1: the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009). According to my quick read (so all numbers here are subject to revision) of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis, the total estimated cost of the proposal is $816 billion over ten years. This is composed of $604 billion of extra spending, plus $212 billion of less money collected in taxes than had been planned. That’s a whole lot of money, even for the U.S. economy.

First, consider when the $604 billion is projected to be spent over the next ten years (all spending timing in Fiscal Years):

Only about 1/7th of the outlays occur in the current fiscal year. Substantially more of the outlays occur in 2012 or later than occur in 2009. How is this stimulus spending?

One argument is that we expect this to be a very long-lasting recession, so we’re going to need this stimulus spending in 2011, 2012, and so on. But, consider that if we’re heading into a Japan 1990s style decade-long slowdown, this kind of spending is exactly what they tried, and it sure didn’t work in that case.

So, if this is a “normal” length recession, the spending bill will have the classic problem that fiscal stimulus does—namely, it comes too late to do much good, but right on time to help stoke inflation and mis-allocation of resources that are suddenly in high demand as the economy enters a recovery. And if this is a very long-lasting recession, more like a U.S. 1930s Depression or Japan 1990s “lost decade”, then the problem is so long-lasting that we’re not really debating a stimulus bill, we’re debating a near-permanent shift of control of resources to the government, which doesn’t exactly have a sterling track record of success. Only if this is a “Goldilocks-length” recession of more than 1-2 years, but less than a decade (which is a pretty hard beast to find in modern American history) would this temporal spending pattern turn out to be wise.

Compare this to the projected temporal distribution of proposed tax reductions:

There is a huge debate among economists about the “multiplier,” which is basically an estimate of how much economic growth bang we get per buck of deficit spending in a recession, and about the effectiveness of fiscal stimulus generally. Keynesian theory is that the multiplier should be greater for government spending than for tax reductions. The debate about this question among economists has a lot more in common with a debate at a meeting of the Modern Language Association (if you were to just add a bunch of data and subtract the intermittent urbane charm) than it does with a meeting of the American Physical Society; which is to say that it’s long on theory and the use of analysis as rhetoric, but pretty short on empirical demonstrations of causal models that can reliably predict the impact of any of these proposals.

That said, at least the tax reductions occur pretty early, and it’s hard to see a whole of multiplying going on for spending that happens several years from now. Of course, these tax cuts weren’t exactly developed with a copy of Hayek in one hand and a calculator in the other. They are mostly a combination of disguised redistribution, social welfare and environmental spending disguised as tax credits, and the kind of rigged changes to investment expensing that have made the U.S. corporate tax the shining model of effectiveness and fairness that it is today. And for whatever it’s worth, academic economists seem to agree with the everyday observation that the 2008 tax rebates didn’t seem to head off many problems at the pass.

Next, consider how the $604 billion of outlays would be spent.

It’s easy to go through a huge proposal and find what seem like fairly ridiculous line items, so I’ll focus on as comprehensive a view as I can of the spending. The CBO reviews each Title (basically, spending area) of the bill, and calls out major items within each Title. Here are all the items that I saw them identify as individual programs with more than $10 billion of projected outlays, in the order that they call them out:

$20.0 billion to increase the maximum benefit under the Supplemental Nutrition Assurance Program (i.e., Food Stamps)

$18.5 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs

$20.4 billion for programs administered by the Department of health and Human Services

$20.0 billion to renovate elementary and secondary schools

$17.6 billion for Pell grants and other student financial assistance at post-secondary institutions

$29.1 billion for other elementary and secondary educational programs

$30.0 billion for highway construction

$13.1 billion for other transportation programs

$11.2 billion for housing assistance programs administered by HUD

$19.5 billion (minimum, could be higher, as per Title XIII) for education grants to states

$27.1 billion for increase unemployment benefits

$13.3 billion to increase health insurance for unemployed workers

$11.1 billion for “Other Unemployment Compensation”

$20.2 billion for Medicaid and Medicare incentive payments to encourage providers to improve healthcare IT

What does this sound like to you? It sounds to me like a wish list for the left wing of the Democratic Party.

I tried to go quickly through the spending for all categories and crudely map them to the OECD classification system that allows for the comparison of spending across governments in the developed world. The huge categories of spending under this bill that I could map to categories other than “General Spending” are in Social Protection (~$90 billion), Education (~$90 billion) and Environment (~$55 billion). Interestingly, Defense represents only about 3% of the spending in the bill (as opposed to 12% of U.S. government spending overall, or about 3% of French overall government spending as a point of comparison) and Public Safety represents only about 1% of spending in the bill (as opposed to about 6% of U.S. government spending overall, or about 2% of French government spending overall). In other words, the net effect of this bill is to shift the distribution of U.S. government spending as a whole away from defense and public safety and toward social programs: for good or ill, to make the U.S. into more of a European-style social welfare state. Because the amount of spending is so huge, this will be a material, not notional, shift. Eventually, we will emerge from this recession/depression/whatever it’s going to be. When that happens, is this really the kind of government we’re going to want?

And this change is unlikely to be temporary. Imagine two illustrative scenarios. First, the U.S. goes through a fairly standard recession and emerges by about late 2010 into a recovery. The government, subject to normal grumbling, is mostly given credit for handling things the right way. Obama is reelected in 2012 and Democrats retain control of Congress. Or second, we enter and new Depression, or more likely, a Japan of the 1990s long-term recession. Unemployment is stuck well above 10%. The mood of the country is deeply pessimistic, and government programs are a lifeline for a good chunk of the population. In which of these two scenarios is it realistic to expect that the 2009 increases to food stamps, unemployment compensation, healthcare benefits or HUD housing assistance will really be rolled back in 2012-2015? Neither, as far as I can see.

And it is this kind of spending that will happen first, and be so locked in, even if we change course in the next couple of years. It’s hard to spend money on roads and bridges extremely quickly unless you get really reckless and inefficient (and we’ll be seeing a bunch of that, too). After cutting taxes the next-fastest thing to do is cut checks. As an illustration, compare the projected timing of outlays for two categories of proposed spending, each of which is projected to be about $45 billion: (1) “Highway Construction” plus “Other Transportation”, which I’ve labeled as Infrastructure, and (2) “Assistance for Unemployed Workers and Struggling Families”, which I’ve labeled as Unemployment:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDBiYjY3OWJjOWMyMWFjYmZjMjU2MTAwNDg1OGExNTA=

Or consider the gigantic—as in close to $100 billion—amount of extra federal money these guys are proposing to spend on education. Study after study has shown that, at a minimum, there is no clearly demonstrable educational benefit from more aggregate spending on schools. Unless you adopt the hard-core Keynesian doctrinaire perspective that it literally doesn’t matter what we spend money on, this will be wasted. We will spend $100 billion on schools and not expect kids to read, write or do math any better. How can this be wise? Do we really want to borrow (because that’s where 100% of this money is going to come from) this much money from our kids for that?

Nobody wants to repeat the mistakes of Herbert Hoover. This is a healthy concern. Hopefully we will be able to restrain ourselves from passing trade restrictions. Trying to balance the budget or restrict the money supply right now is almost certainly a fairly crazy experiment to run. We’re going to be running a big deficit. But this proposal is a disaster.


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We could say [Democrats] spend money like drunken sailors, but that would be unfair to drunken sailors. It would be unfair, because the sailors are spending their own money. --Ronald Reagan

Al Gore didn't invent the internet, he invented global warming

The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants - Camus

The person who advocates government planning of the economy always assumes that it is his plan that will be put into effect. --Hayek

Re: Stimulus Interruptus

« Reply #1 on: January 28, 2009, 09:11:14 AM »

TonyBlair

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Keeping Politics Out of the "Stimulus" Bill [Andy McCarthy]

So lemme make sure I have this straight: President Unifier is warning Republicans to "keep politics out of" debate over the Stimulus Bill Generational Theft Act into which his party has stuck $4B+ for ACORN, among other pay-off-our-political-allies goodies?

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWIwMGE5MjNmODg2ZmM2M2Q5NWI2MTkwYTVjYjE5ZDA=

More partisan pettiness [Mark Steyn]

A reader passes along this news update from WBJC, the Baltimore classical station:

Barack Obama has requested that Republicans keep politics to a minimum and quickly pass an $850,000,000,000 stimulus package.

You've got to admire guys who can read this stuff with a straight face.


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Re: Stimulus Interruptus

« Reply #2 on: January 28, 2009, 09:12:54 AM »

TonyBlair

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Exposed: Speaker Pelosi's Secret $347 Billion Program [Michael G. Franc]

There is a secret program lurking within the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Debt bill. You won’t find it listed in the table of contents, or anywhere else for that matter. Yet it will cost taxpayers an additional $347.1 billion over the next decade.

It starts out at the relatively modest level of $700 million in 2009, but rises inexorably thereafter—to $4.1 billion in 2010, $11.1 billion in 2011, $22.0 billion in 2012, $31.9 billion in 2013, $37.5 billion in 2014, $42.1 billion in 2015, until it reaches $53.6 billion in 2019.

We’re talking about the interest charges that will be required to finance the $825 billion cost of the debt bill. We learned this today in a letter that Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas W. Elmendorf sent to the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Here is the relevant part:

Under CBO’s current economic assumptions and assuming that none of the direct budgetary effects of H.R. 1 are offset by future legislation, CBO estimates that the government’s interest costs would increase by $0.7 billion in fiscal year 2009 and by a total of $347 billion over the 2009-2019 period.

So when you hear politicians talk about the $825 billion ten-year cost of this legislation, keep in mind that it masks these unavoidable interest costs, bringing the total ten-year cost to at least $1,172,000,000,000.00.

The debt that gives rise to $53.6 billion in interest costs in 2019 alone, moreover, will not magically disappear in 2020 or beyond. Thus, the real cost of the debt bill will grow and compound over the years so long as that debt remains unpaid.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzgwNjJlZGIwOGI4YWVhMDEwMDY4MTFmMGI2Yzc3Y2Y=


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Re: Stimulus Interruptus

« Reply #3 on: January 28, 2009, 09:15:56 AM »

TonyBlair

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Morning Bell: What Is the Spending Multiplier on a Pack of Condoms?

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/01/27/morning-bell-what-is-the-spending-multiplier-on-a-pack-of-condoms/


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Re: Stimulus Interruptus

« Reply #4 on: January 28, 2009, 09:21:13 AM »

TonyBlair

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Good Morning, Suckers

By Peter Ferrara on 1.28.09 @ 6:10AM

Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats are playing the voters for fools with the so-called stimulus package. The massive $825 billion package is not even targeted on programs to stimulate the economy. Instead, it is laced with runaway government spending for increased welfare, overgrown bureaucracy, pork, political payoffs, and other waste. That runaway spending is causing record smashing deficits of $1.5 trillion or more, equivalent to over 50% of the entire federal budget for fiscal 2008.

For example, the "stimulus" package includes $50 million for the National Endowment of the Arts to help "the arts community throughout the United States." Wouldn't want our economy to get behind in the international arts competition. The government is going to borrow $50 million out of the private economy to spend on this, which will result in a net loss of economic output rather than a net gain.

Another $2.1 billion is for Head Start, another program not previously known for stimulating the economy. A further $2 billion is to be spent on Child Care Development Block Grants, which provide day care. We are going to revive economic growth through the federal government spending billions on babysitting, rather than tax cuts for capital investment. A similar initiative involves $120 million to finance part-time work for seniors in community service agencies.

Then there is $500 million to speed the processing of applications for Social Security disability claims. This has already created one net new job in the employment of a person within the Obama Administration assigned to figure out what this has to do with stimulating the economy.

Another $6 billion goes to college and universities. We already spend hundreds of billions on these schools, and such education provides valuable long-term benefits. But this is not a means to spark a booming economy in the short term. The same is true of the $13 billion in Title I grants "to provide extra academic support to help raise the achievement of students at risk of educational failure or to help all students in high-poverty schools meet challenging State academic standards," as the congressional report accompanying the bill explains. Ditto that for the $13 billion in IDEA, Part B State grants to help pay for "the excess costs of providing special education and related services to children with disabilities."

Then there is the effort to stimulate the economy by increasing welfare spending. There is $20 billion for increased food stamps, including lifting restrictions on how long welfare dependents can receive food stamp benefits. Another $1.7 billion is to be spent to help the homeless, not previously in our history a significant source of economic growth. Another $1 billion goes for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance program, to help low income families pay their heating bills, a worthy objective that has nothing to do with stimulating the economy. Still another billion goes to the Community Services Block Grant to support "employment, food, housing, health, and emergency assistance to low-income families and individuals." Another $200 million goes for senior nutrition programs, such as Meals on Wheels. Then there is an additional $200 million for AmeriCorps, to help satisfy "increased demand for services for vulnerable populations to meet critical needs in communities across the U.S." Another $5 billion is devoted to public housing. None of this increased welfare spending has anything to do with promoting economic growth. Rather, it retards growth by inducing more dependency on government.

http://spectator.org/archives/2009/01/28/good-morning-suckers


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Re: Stimulus Interruptus

« Reply #5 on: January 28, 2009, 09:22:21 AM »

TonyBlair

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ACORN's Stimulus

By Matthew Vadum on 1.27.09 @ 3:30PM

With a new president ensconced in the White House, it's time to roll out the goodies for loyal supporters in left-of-center political advocacy groups such as ACORN.

The latest economic stimulus bill promises to do just that by providing a huge bailout --up to $5.2 billion in taxpayer funds -- for some of the same liberal groups that helped get Barack Obama elected.

The three relevant fiscal provisions are buried deep in the $825 billion monstrosity known as the proposed "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009."

Title XII of the spending legislation backed by the Democratic congressional leadership and the Obama administration would dole out $1 billion in old-fashioned slush funds for the Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) program. Local politicians love CDBG because it is flexible. The program gives them wide latitude when spending grant money and allows local leaders to use federal dollars on local projects that they wouldn't dream of spending their own local tax dollars on. ACORN loves CDBG because it is adept at lobbying for CDBG funds.

A separate $10 million is provided in the stimulus package to develop or rehabilitate low-income housing under the Self-Help and Assisted Homeownership Opportunity Program (SHOP).

But the biggest chunk of the $5.2 billion comes in the form of $4.19 billion for foreclosure relief through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program.

Although ACORN operatives usually get their hands on such funds only after they have first passed through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development or state and local governments, the new spending bill largely eliminates these dawdling middle men, making it easier to get Uncle Sam's largess directly into the hands of the same people who run ACORN's various vote fraud and extortion rackets. And the legislative package provides these funds without the usual prohibition on using government money for lobbying or political activities.

http://spectator.org/archives/2009/01/27/acorns-stimulus


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Re: Stimulus Interruptus

« Reply #6 on: January 28, 2009, 11:36:46 AM »

TonyBlair

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It's Raining Ed$ [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

From the New York Times this morning, on the stimulus party:

WASHINGTON — The economic stimulus plan that Congress has scheduled for a vote on Wednesday would shower the nation’s school districts, child care centers and university campuses with $150 billion in new federal spending, a vast two-year investment that would more than double the Department of Education’s current budget.

The proposed emergency expenditures on nearly every realm of education, including school renovation, special education, Head Start and grants to needy college students, would amount to the largest increase in federal aid since Washington began to spend significantly on education after World War II.

Critics and supporters alike said that by its sheer scope, the measure could profoundly change the federal government’s role in education, which has traditionally been the responsibility of state and local government.

Responding in part to a plea from Democratic governors earlier this month, Congress allocated $79 billion to help states facing large fiscal shortfalls maintain government services, and especially to avoid cuts to education programs, from pre-kindergarten through higher education.

Obama administration officials, teachers unions and associations representing school boards, colleges and other institutions in American education said the aid would bring crucial financial relief to the nation’s 15,000 school districts and to thousands of campuses otherwise threatened with severe cutbacks.

Michael J. Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute tells NRO in response:

Those who believe that this level of federal funding for our schools will disappear two years from now are similar to the people who still think Rod Blagojevich did nothing wrong: they are delusional, ill-informed, or totally naïve. And once Uncle Sam becomes a larger investor in our education system, he will no doubt make even greater demands on states and school districts, bending them to his will. No Child Left Behind was the beginning of the end of federalism in education; this stimulus package is the end.

The quote of the day, though, may come from Rick Hess of AEI, in that NY Times piece:

Frederick Hess, an education policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, criticized the bill as failing to include mechanisms to encourage districts to bring school budgets in line with property tax revenues, which have plunged with the bursting of the real estate bubble.

“It’s like an alcoholic at the end of the night when the bars close, and the solution is to open the bar for another hour,” Mr. Hess said.

(Well, the D.C. set might not think that too crazy, considering?)

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTVjOGNhZWMxODZkZTA4ZjM5OGIzNTlkNWQ3YjFhMTU=


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Re: Stimulus Interruptus

« Reply #7 on: January 28, 2009, 11:52:42 AM »

TonyBlair

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A 40-Year Wish List
You won't believe what's in that stimulus bill.

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before."

So said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in November, and Democrats in Congress are certainly taking his advice to heart. The 647-page, $825 billion House legislation is being sold as an economic "stimulus," but now that Democrats have finally released the details we understand Rahm's point much better. This is a political wonder that manages to spend money on just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years.

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.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123310466514522309.html


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Re: Stimulus Interruptus

« Reply #8 on: January 28, 2009, 03:39:16 PM »

Counter

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Snowball needs to reverse his position on manmade global warming and get in on this gravy train!!!
I'll count the grant dollars as they roll in.
They don't call me Counter for nothing!


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Counter

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Re: Stimulus Interruptus

« Reply #9 on: January 29, 2009, 07:42:42 AM »

TonyBlair

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There is yet a glimmer of hope....

Every Republican [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Voted no on the stimulus.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTk3YTVjNjc5NDMxMGUyMjdmZGMxMTUyZDFiZDRjMDI=


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Re: Stimulus Interruptus

« Reply #10 on: February 07, 2009, 06:51:37 PM »

TonyBlair

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The Fierce Urgency of Pork

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 6, 2009; A17

"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."

-- President Obama, Feb. 4.

Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.

The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As Michael Kinsley once observed, in Washington the real scandal isn't what's illegal, but what's legal. Not paying taxes is one thing. But what made this case intolerable was the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years.

He'd been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he's not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don't get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence.

At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged Treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning non-stratospheric wages. Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal's private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he'd come to Washington to upend.

And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/05/AR2009020502766_pf.html


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Re: Stimulus Interruptus

« Reply #11 on: February 08, 2009, 02:07:46 AM »

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In his own words, the leading Senate Democrat Harry Reid is clearly STIMULATED by all this talk of "new money", as is Chuck (I destroyed Indy Mac Bank) Schumer, gloating in the background. (This 45 second video is really priceless. And for those who say "size doesn't matter", Harry clears that all up, stating emphatically that the Democrats' "package" is "big enough" and that they are "very very happy" and "proud" of it?)

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/YGx--ZmP-0c&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/YGx--ZmP-0c&rel=0</a>

Is this the Democratic "climax" to all this arousing talk between big spending liberals who can't wait to get their hands on a trillion dollars of your money to pursue their socialist utopia...or just a bunch of "If it feels good, do it" Democrats with a collective case of premature ej....(do I really have to spell this out?)


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Re: Stimulus Interruptus

« Reply #12 on: February 08, 2009, 07:33:57 PM »

Counter

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Is it possible that we are in a recession because everyone gave all their money to Obama's Presidential campaign?


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Re: Stimulus Interruptus

« Reply #13 on: February 10, 2009, 01:59:48 PM »

Fettuccini II Offline

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Chuck Schumer, liberal Democrat leader(?), sharing his perspective on government spending:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/JEfICUoWKBw&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/JEfICUoWKBw&rel=0</a>

I'm almost speechless. However, if I had to comment I might say that when big spending liberal politicians are spending other people's money, they MUST convince themselves that the people "don't care" how their tax money is spent(?) Huh

(NOTE: Given the number of Democrats who DON"T PAY THEIR TAXES, it is no wonder Democrats don't relate to what actual taxpayers think.)

What world do these liberal Democrat "public servants" live on???


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Re: Stimulus Interruptus

« Reply #14 on: February 14, 2009, 10:37:51 AM »

TonyBlair

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Schock and Awe...

Schock to the President's Argument

February 13, 2009 2:25 PM

Just yesterday, President Obama went to the Caterpillar plant in East Peoria, Illinois and the urged Caterpillar employees to lobby their congressman, Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill to support the stimulus package.

Singling Schock out in front of his constituents, the President asked the 27-year-old legislator to stand up.

“Aaron’s still trying to make up his mind about our recover package,” Obama said to the employees in the crowd. “And so we know that all of you are going to talk to him after our event, because he's a very talented young man. I've got great confidence in him to do the right thing for the people of Peoria.”

Today Rep. Schock said on the House floor that "I found it very interesting that after the president finished his speech and I stayed around, not one employee at that facility approached me and asked me to vote for this bill."

In fact, said Schock, “I have received over 1,400 phone calls, e-mails and letters from employees alone asking me to oppose this legislation."

Why!? Because, Schock said, "They know that this bill is not stimulus. They know that this bill will not do anything to create long-term, sustained economic growth. This bill is too big to get it wrong.”

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/02/schock-to-the-p.html


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