Tag: Domestic Spending

Donald Trump’s Infrastructure Program–Part 2

Now that Trump has won the Big Enchilada will he keep one of his campaign promises to those working class peasants that he groomed for over a year?  That being his promise to revive America’s crumbling infrastructure….

I wrote a post awhile back about the “downside” of Trump’s proposal…..the article I read was not very positive……

Donald Trump was an outsider who boldly stormed the citadel of Washington DC and won. He has promised real change, but his infrastructure plan appears to be just more of the same – privatizing public assets and delivering unearned profits to investors at the expense of the people. He needs to try something new; and for this he could look to Abraham Lincoln, whose bold solution was very similar to one now being considered in Europe: just print the money.

Source: Trump’s $1 Trillion Infrastructure Plan: Lincoln Had a Bolder Solution – LA Progressive

To be fair I read a rather positive piece written in the Washington Times…..

Additional spending on infrastructure could deliver a powerful jolt to economic growth if President-elect Trump eschews conventional government approaches and gets the money out quickly and effectively.

Sadly, the benefits of such spending attracts skeptics, because President Obama’s stimulus efforts failed so badly at creating jobs in the wake of the financial crisis and that gave infrastructure investment a bad name.

Source: Donald Trump’s infrastructure program – Washington Times

There is always two sides to every issue…..I gave my reader both sides as closely as I could and they can make up their minds if they have the energy to do so…..

What To Spend The Stim Cash On?

The U.S. public is bubbling over with ideas on how to spend the billions of dollars set to flow to states from the federal stimulus program — including six-packs of beer, airboats and bathtubs.

Thousands of suggestions have poured into websites states have set up to give residents updated information on the money and where it might be spent, and in some cases asking them to submit their own ideas. Ohio, for example, had received a whopping 11,373 proposals as of Thursday.

President Barack Obama has pledged to keep citizens apprised of how the $787 billion stimulus plan is carried out through the website www.recovery.gov and has encouraged governors to do the same. Within a week of the bill passing at least a dozen states had created stimulus sites.

Some of the ideas for tapping into the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act posted to the sites go beyond typical bricks-and-mortar infrastructure projects like roads and bridges.

Virginia has received scores of ideas since launching its website on February 10. A common theme was using stimulus funds to send the money back to taxpayers as a rebate or tax cut. Still, there were some unusual requests.

One Virginia resident proposed a “shovel-ready” idea to lift small business development by giving a six-pack of locally brewed beer to every adult in the state. The cost would be $48.6 million with the assumption that the beer’s price would average $7.99.

If you have an idea go to your state’s website and submit…who knows?  You could win the stim lotto!

Why Pick On “Entitlements”?

Right-wing advocates of “fiscal responsibility” typically target “entitlement programs” like Social Security and Medicare as the main cause of the country’s financial problems. They prefer “market solutions” to questions of retirement security and health care coverage. To accomplish this privatization agenda, they promote the mistaken notion that both Social Security and Medicare are in crisis and are unsustainable.

In doing so, however, they ignore or distort some basic facts, progressive economists say. Advocacy groups and think tanks like the Campaign for America’s Future, the Economic Policy Institute, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, the Center for Economic Policy Research and the Center for American Progress tend to agree that Social Security is not in any imminent financial danger and that Medicare’s problems are not inherent but are related directly to the general crisis of health care in the country.

Take Social Security, for example. Social Security will have a $5.5 trillion surplus by 2027 and will be able to pay all benefits promised under current law, through 2041. In addition, Congressional Budget Office estimates show that if no changes are ever made to the Social Security program, in 75 years, the program will be able to afford to pay retirees better benefits than they receive now.

By comparison, if no changes are ever made to the health care system, in 75 years the cost to the country will equal about 99 percent of current Gross Domestic Product.

Nancy Altman, an economist and former advisor to Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, concurred. Of all federal programs, Social Security is the most “fiscally sound,” she noted. If predictions are correct and the program does experience budget shortfalls in 75 years, they will be “manageable.” By comparison, she noted, predicted deficits in the program 75 years from now will be less than the cost of the Bush tax cuts for the richest one percent of Americans.

Altman added that according to federal law, saving money in the Social Security program does not automatically translate into savings in the federal budget or in anyway help balance the budget.

At a time when Americans have lost $2 trillion in housing value and $6 trillion in retirement savings as a result of the market crashes, this is no time to privatize or gut the social safety, these progressives argued.

“We don’t have an entitlements crisis,” economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy Research, added, “we have a health care crisis.” The word “crisis” should not be used to described Social Security’s financial situation either. Social Security is not “in anything that any reasonable person can call crisis.”

Medicare’s long-term sustainability is tied directly to the need for reforms in the health care system as a whole. “The root of the deficit problem is health care costs. Our leaders must get serious about improving our health care system. A concentrated effort by policy makers to control health care expenditures will help American business compete internationally and free resources for other pressing needs,” read a joint statement this week by Hickey, Baker and Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute.

Tax cuts and entitlements attacks….same song …same old tired party.

Obama’s Fiscal Responsibility

In his speech to a joint session of Congress, Tuesday, Feb. 24, President Obama offered some additional assurances that his approach to budget policy will focus on saving taxpayer dollars without undermining the social safety net and harming working families.

Obama targeted health care reform. “[T]he cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough. So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait and it will not wait another year,” he told Congress.

Obama’s agenda for fiscal responsibility looks to other places for savings. He said, “In this budget, we will end education programs that don’t work and end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don’t need them. We’ll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq, and reform our defense budget so that we’re not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don’t use. We will root out the waste, fraud and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn’t make our seniors any healthier, and we will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas.”
In a statement following the speech, Barbara Kennelly, director of the national Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said, “The President is right, comprehensive healthcare reform is the best way to strengthen Medicare for the future and that healthcare reform should come sooner rather than later.”

Comprehensive health care reform that controls costs, provides universal access and offers public options in addition to private options to consumers will reduce overall costs of health care and ease the burden on taxpayers over the long haul.

Experts in the health care field believe that Obama’s reference to waste in Medicare targets the issue of overpayments to insurance carriers implemented under the Bush Medicare privatization law in 2005. They suggest that a reform in this area alone could save billions annually. The White House Web site specifically calls for “eliminating subsidies to the private insurance Medicare Advantage program,” which could produce a savings of about $15 billion.

Government In My Life

I have never wanted the government to tell me that I could smoke or not.  Or read porn or not.  Or be gay or not.  Or anything that involved my private life.  What I do in my private life is absolutely none of their business.  If I am hurting NO one but myself…then leave me the hell alone!

But now the government has gone a bit far…even for those a/holes!

The federal government is funding a $5 million national media campaign that launches this month, extolling the virtues of marriage for those ages 18 to 30.

Research suggests a bevy of benefits for those who marry, including better health, greater wealth and more happiness for the couple, and improved well-being for children.

Some say the government has no business using tax dollars to promote marriage. But others say the campaign is just like those conducted by other federal agencies to encourage the use of seat belts and discourage drug use, smoking and drunken driving.

With ads on social networking sites Facebook and MySpace, videos on YouTube, spots on radio talk shows, ads in magazines and public transportation and a new website (TwoOfUs.org), creators say the aim is to start a national conversation about marriage.

Resource center project director Mary Myrick of Oklahoma City says the media campaign has a budget of $1.25 million a year for four years; the campaign is part of the federal Healthy Marriage Initiative, a Bush administration effort under the Administration for Children & Families.

In 2005, Congress allocated $750 million over five years to the marriage initiative, with $100 million a year for marriage-related programs and $50 million a year supporting fatherhood programs. Of those dollars, the resource center is receiving $2 million each year over five years. The media campaign money is an additional annual allocation, according to HHS.

Now, the government will be spending my tax money to tell people the benefits of getting married, is that about it?  They are going to be persuading people that marriage is the only way to live life?  They are going to tell people that marriage the only acceptable way to fit into society, right?

Am I the only one that thinks that this is just so much crap?

Professor Sez…….When Is It Pork?

Does anyone besides me get tired of the political rhetoric and use of buzzwords to gain political points?  Last week’s was “pork”.  Here is a news flash for all of you–ALL spending is pork to someone, somewhere!

Now there is a word that has got a bunch of play in the last 3 weeks or so.  But what is “pork”?  Is there really a such a thing as “pork”?

First of all there is a political saying, “it is not pork unless it is someone else”s district”.

“PORK” is a purely subjective word, depends on your point of view.  If you want to be accurate then ALL spending can be called pork even the billions upon billions the Defense Dept. receives.  It is a complete bullsh!t word that is used in the theatrics of Washington.

Pork comes from the term “pork barrel spending” or spending for pet projects of the representives in their home state.  Spending is helping some body somewhere with a project that is needed at least appears to be needed.  But think about this….how much military spending has been labelled pork?  Very little….that is one of those sacred things in Washington.

How about earmarks?  These are when a member of Congress tries to bring the bacon home to his/her home district.  These things are what gives the members of an appropriation committee their power.  These are to obtain federal money for projects back home…oh yeah..it is also called “PORK”.

In essence ALL spending could be called pork at some point.  We will see if the Dems counter-attack when the bills for the military comes up…these bills are where many Repubs attach pork for their home districts….will the Dems play the tit for tat game with the Repubs?  My guess is they will!

TARP UpDate

Now here something the American people should jump on with both feet……you were PLAYED!

The U.S. Treasury may have significantly overpaid for its investments in financial institutions, a government watchdog said Thursday, as criticism of the $700 billion financial rescue continues to build.

“Treasury paid substantially more for the assets it purchased under the [ Troubled Asset Relief Program] than their then-current market value,” Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren told the Senate Banking Committee.

Warren, who chairs a five-person congressional oversight panel overseeing the Wall Street rescue plan, said a report being released Friday by the group includes an analysis of 10 TARP transactions. Extrapolating that analysis for all of the purchases made by the Treasury in 2008 suggests Treasury paid $254 billion for preferred stock and warrants worth approximately $176 billion, a shortfall of $78 billion

“They did not price for risk, that’s what markets do,” Warren said, suggesting the Treasury’s lack of consistency had made the government funds a better deal for some institutions.

Details of the transactions used to come up with the number were not released.

The Treasury has frequently noted that many of its major investments – those in American International Group Inc. (AIG), U.S. automakers, and a second capital boost to Bank of America Corp. (BAC) – were made to maintain stability in the financial system, and are different than the $250 billion plan to inject capital into the banking system.

“Treasury has made long-term investments to stabilize the financial sector and get credit flowing, but more needs to be done,” spokesman Isaac Baker said.

More broadly, both lawmakers and other government watchdogs were sharply critical about the way the program has been implemented; the ad hoc nature of the Treasury’s efforts to stabilize individual financial firms; and the lack of transparency surrounding the program.

Basically, what we are saying here is that the Treasury just threw money at the banks and told them to have fun.  Taxpayer may be getting more screwed than first thought.

Is It All That Stimulating?

They call it “stimulus” legislation, but the economic measures racing through Congress would devote tens of billions of dollars to causes that have little to do with jolting the country out of recession.

There’s $345 million for Agriculture Department computers, $650 million for TV converter boxes, $15 billion for college scholarships — worthy, perhaps, but not likely to put many Americans back to work quickly.

Yes, there are many billions of dollars in “ready-to-go” job-creating projects in President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus bill. But there are also plenty of items that are just unfinished business for Congress’ old bulls.

An $800 billion-plus package, it turns out, gives lawmakers plenty of opportunities to rid themselves of nagging headaches left over from the days when running up the government’s $10 trillion-plus debt was a bigger concern.

There’s $1 billion to deal with Census problems and $88 million to help move the Public Health Service into a new building next year. The Senate would devote $2.1 billion to pay off a looming shortfall in public housing accounts, $870 million to combat the flu and $400 million to slow the spread HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia.

But nothing is in the legislation by accident. By including in the Senate stimulus bill such far-ranging ideas as $40 million to convert the way health statistics are collected — from paper to an electronic system — lawmakers are able to thin out their in-boxes, even if they aren’t doing much to create jobs.

There’s also $380 million in the Senate bill for a rainy day fund for the Women, Infants and Children program that delivers healthful food to the poor. WIC got a $1 billion infusion last fall.

At the same time, putting items in the stimulus bill that really should be handled in annual appropriations bills creates more room in the latter for pet project and other programs.

Part of the reason so much non-stimulus spending has made it into the stimulus bill is that there are only so many traditional jobs-heavy public works projects that can get started quickly. As it is, most of the money in the bill for roadbuilding, water projects and mass transit probably won’t be spent until the economy has turned around and is back on a recovery path.

For example, just one-third of $30 billion proposed by the House for highway construction would reach the economy in the next year and a half, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Democrats are going ahead with Obama’s $500 tax credit for most workers and $1,000 for couples even though there’s wide agreement that last year’s rebate checks weren’t effective in sparking recovery.

Defenders of the package said that once experts determined it would take $800 billion to start to pull the country out of recession and emphasized the urgency, details took on less importance.

If the reader would like to step back into the posts of Info Ink they will find that I have not been a big supporter of any of the so called stimulus bills or bailout or whatever you wanted call them.  The first was hand outs for Repubs and Wall Street, the second is hand outs for Dems and pet projects.  If they want to stimulate the economy then flush the crap and do a bill with NOTHING but parts that will stimulate the economy now and in the long run.  This bill is a joke and a waste of time and will lead to nothing good!

Obama’s Stimulus Plan

Sounds good on the surface but a closer examination, it only helps those who started the whole thing–banks.

Obama’s proposed solution—the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan—will allocate hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds, the bulk of which will flow into the coffers of the very banks and corporations that reaped massive profits from the policies that precipitated the crash of 2008.

In a number of interviews leading up to Thursday’s speech, Obama made a point of stressing that in formulating his stimulus plan he had consulted Republican politicians and economists—that is, the very forces who have been the most ferocious advocates of the “free market” policies that contributed to the crisis and who most directly aided and abetted the corrupt practices he criticized in his address.

The modus operandi of Obama’s speech mirrored that employed three months ago to rush through Congress the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), which transferred $700 billion in taxpayer funds to the banks. At that time, Bush took to the airwaves to issue dire warnings of recession and mass unemployment should Congress fail to act immediately to bail out the banks. The aim was to create an environment of anxiety and preempt any public discussion of the causes of the financial crisis or the merits of the bailout bill. Obama, then the Democratic presidential candidate, joined with the Democratic leadership in Congress to support the Republican administration’s rescue of Wall Street.

Of course, the TARP windfall for the financial elite has done nothing to prevent the disaster it was supposed to avert. The stimulus plan announced by Obama on Thursday will likewise do nothing to solve the economic crisis. Once again, a dire economic crisis is being exploited to implement policies favorable to big business that could otherwise not be implemented.

In his speech, Obama did not put a price tag on his plan, generally estimated to total between $675 billion and $775 billion over two years. Indeed, his transition team has repeatedly delayed submitting an actual plan to the new Democratic-dominated Congress, while Obama has sought to accommodate its provisions to the most right-wing factions in both parties. Earlier this week he let it be known that some $200 billion initially allocated as part of infrastructure funding will instead go toward tax breaks, bringing the total in tax windfalls to $300 billion, half of which will go to business. Ordinary families will get a mere $1,000 year in tax relief.

The “recovery” Obama envisages will, in fact, do little to relieve the distress and suffering of working class families. He declared his plan would “create or save at least 3 million jobs over the next few years.” But the US economy lost nearly 2.5 million jobs in 2008 alone and, as Obama hinted, it will continue to lose millions of jobs in the coming years. “It will take time—perhaps many years” before “we can restore opportunity and prosperity,” he declared, adding at another point that “it is altogether likely that things may get worse before they get better.”

Sorry, but my optimism has left the building.  Early in the electoral process, I suggested that Obama was not the agent of change that others thought he was, I was chasitized, especially on Daily Kos, but so far he has proven me right and the more he talks the more he continues to make my prediction accurate.  Thank you, Mr. President-elect.

The “New Deal” Was A Failure!

From a piece written in the NY Times by Adam Cohen.

Repubs are grasping at straws as usual trying desperately to find anything that will stop their party’s erosion.  This time the new talking point is the the New Deal of FDR was a failure and did little to help the country.  Sounds more like revisionists trying to rewrite history.

Conservatives have railed against the New Deal from the start. In 1934, H. L. Mencken was already decrying it as “a saturnalia of expropriation and waste.” When F.D.R. ran for re-election in 1936, a headline in William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers insisted that “Moscow Backs Roosevelt.”

But Americans were not fooled. They knew F.D.R. was on their side in a way that Herbert Hoover and his fellow free-marketers hadn’t been. They could see first-hand the good that Roosevelt’s jobs programs were doing for the Depression’s victims and the slow but unmistakable improvements in the economy.

Anti-New Deal rhetoric has never disappeared from American political life. When Barry Goldwater ran for president in 1964, he attacked President Dwight Eisenhower for having presided over a “dime store New Deal.” But in recent years, the attacks have heated up.

At the start of the Bush administration, conservatives talked openly about rolling back the New Deal. They were trying to unravel the regulatory state, including protections for workers, consumers and investors. They were also promoting a favorite cause of Wall Street’s: privatizing Social Security, the crown jewel of the New Deal.

These days the public is in no mood, given the high costs of deregulation in the mortgage industry and the Bernard Madoff scandal, for more talk about dismantling regulations and federal oversight. But today, the new focus is Mr. Obama’s stimulus package. If F.D.R.’s New Deal spending made things worse, it follows that the Obama administration should not make the same mistake.

The anti-New Deal line is wrong as a matter of economics. F.D.R.’s spending programs did help the economy and created millions of new jobs. The problem, we now know, is not that F.D.R. spent too much priming the pump, but rather that he spent too little. It was his decision to cut back on spending on New Deal programs that brought about a nasty recession in 1937-38.

The second problem is that the criticism overlooks the relief Roosevelt’s programs brought to millions. When F.D.R. took office, unemployment was 25 percent, and families were losing their homes, living in shantytowns, even fighting one another for food at garbage dumps.