Since you all know by now that I'm your best friend in terms of breaking down the stimulus prorgrams and putting them in some sort of perspective as to what is actually stimulative, and what is trash, I've gone ahead and made the necessary updates.
I've gone through the Nelson/Collins revisions line by line and made the updates to each of my column breakdowns. You may download the new spreadsheet here.
As I previously noted, the spending in the initial senate bill that was actually stimulative had actually decreased substantially, from 23.86% in the House Bill to 14.23% in the Senate Bill.
As a reminder, this is taking into account for only the Direct Spending portion of the bills, and not the tax portion of the bills.
Here is where we stood on February 3rd, as the initial text of the Senate's Bill was released to the public:
1. Government Overhead & Administration $14,180,545,000 3.37%
2. Direct Economic Stimulative Spending $59,877,029,000 14.23%
3. Increase in Non-Economically Stimulative Government Programmatic Spending $88,863,250,000 21.12%
4. Potentially Stimulative Loans/Grants $251,626,986,000 59.80%
5. Indeterminate "Slush Fund" Monies $6,245,473,000 1.48%
For anybody new to the discussion, you'll please refer back to my breakdown of the Senate stimulus bill for descriptions of how I chose to break down those categories.
After the "bipartisan editing" by Senators Nelson & Collins, here is where we stand now:
1. Government Overhead & Administration $14,033,045,000 3.33%
2. Direct Economic Stimulative Spending $35,062,029,000 8.33%
3. Increase in Non-Economically Stimulative Government Programmatic Spending $75,251,250,000 17.88%
4. Potentially Stimulative Loans/Grants $246,611,986,000 58.61%
5. Indeterminate "Slush Fund" Monies $5,950,473,000 1.41%
TOTAL $376,908,783,000
Just in case anybody out there needed any indication that our representatives in Washington have absolutely no clue as to what they're doing on a daily basis, this should be the ultimate evidence.
Trying to go through this big pile of garbage line by line, these two morons have sat down and decreased the amount of real, actual, short-term stimulative spending by over 70%.
There is almost no money left at all out of the direct spending portion of this bill that is going to see the light of day inside of the next 12 months.
If there is anybody left out there that thinks the purpose of this bill is to do anything other than to hyperinflate the size and power of the federal government, I dare you to challenge me.
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Eliminating the current year spending is not a bad thing. The longer the actual disbursement of the pork is delayed, the more possible it becomes to enact new legislation to rescind it before it is spent.
ReplyDeleteThe best thing for this country is for the government to stop meddling. The recent upswing in the stock market is a good indicator that the market is ready to recover and wants to recover. As soon as it does, the jobs will return.
Anything that can be done to prevent the govt. from spending our money is good. But we, the people must follow through and ensure that the stupid programs are all rescinded and not let them happen.
We have elected a bunch of autocrats who want to use our tax dollars to buy the votes of people who don't work or pay taxes. They want to increase the ranks of the non-working and non-tax paying popuation. We must stand up and say "No".
Best regards,
Gail S
I can't disagree with eliminating spending. And of course I agree they should just leave it alone, and then follow up by working on the root problem: monetary policy.
ReplyDeleteBut let's recall that we're being sold this nonsense as a stimulus to the economy.
There is absolutely no argument now that they've removed almost all of the short-term spending that this is just a monster compilation of spending programs intended, as you point out, to buy votes.