Democrat stimulus package or massive pork bill? You decide-Part 1

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009 is perhaps the most appalling piece of proposed legislation I have ever seen. The stated purpose of the bill is to jumpstart the economy and create jobs. The bill itself claims that there are no earmarks in this bill. That is one of the most comical claims I have seen as this entire bill is an earmark that will be shoved down the throat of taxpayers with little or no debate.

Under the guise of providing help to the economy, the democrats are proposing a spending bill that right up front promises the following:

The package contains targeted efforts in:
• Clean, Efficient, American Energy
• Transforming our Economy with Science and Technology
• Modernizing Roads, Bridges, Transit and Waterways
• Education for the 21st Century
• Tax Cuts to Make Work Pay and Create Jobs
• Lowering Healthcare Costs
• Helping Workers Hurt by the Economy
• Saving Public Sector Jobs and Protect Vital Services

In the first part of this series, let's examine each of these main points and their description to see what is really going on with this bill.

Clean, Efficient, American Energy: To put people back to work today and reduce our dependence on foreign oil tomorrow, we will strengthen efforts directed at doubling renewable energy production and renovate public buildings to make them more energy efficient.
• $32 billion to transform the nation’s energy transmission, distribution, and production systems by allowing for a smarter and better grid and focusing investment in renewable technology.
• $16 billion to repair public housing and make key energy efficiency retrofits.
• $6 billion to weatherize modest-income homes.

Half of this is alleged investment in infrastructure. For any investment in infrastructure to be considered able to produce a "stimulus" effect, it must be able to add money or jobs to the economy immediately. The transformation of the energy grid fails miserably under those terms. Anyone who has ever tried to even consider upgrading the pathetic energy infrastructure in New York knows that the minute you mention it, you are setting yourself up for years of lawsuits from environmental, neighborhood and civil rights groups. Even if this money is to go to giant windmills (no-where near the Kennedy estate please), it would take years for that money to make it into the economy.

The rest of this section is money that will go down the money pit of HUD. Because you see, the only place to distribute this money is via Housing and Urban Development, long a wasting place of billions of your tax dollars. I do not know of a single "public housing" project that I would consider truly successful mainly due to the fact that those who live in them do not consider themselves responsible for the care and upkeep of their own homes. This is welfare pure and simple. And expensive welfare at that.

Transform our Economy with Science and Technology: We need to put scientists to work looking for the next great discovery, creating jobs in cutting-edge-technologies, and making smart investments that will help businesses in every community succeed in a global economy. For every dollar invested in broadband the economy sees a ten-fold return on that investment.
•$10 billion for science facilities, research, and instrumentation.
•$6 billion to expand broadband internet access so businesses in rural and other underserved areas can link up to the global economy.

Ten billion dollars on research. For what? And how will this impact the economy any time soon? Science is by its very nature long term. This will have zero impact and is likely just liberal code for publicly funded stem cell research. The other 6 million for broadband is a joke. I don't know where these politicians are living but the public sector has expanded broadband just fine on its own. This is just a waste of 6 billion dollars and even though one more cow in Nebraska may be able to watch YouTube, I fail to see the stimulative impact.

Modernize Roads, Bridges, Transit and Waterways: To build a 21st century economy, we must engage contractors across the nation to create jobs rebuilding our crumbling roads, and bridges, modernize public buildings, and put people to work cleaning our air, water and land.
•$30 billion for highway construction;
•$31 billion to modernize federal and other public infrastructure with investments that lead to long term energy cost savings;
•$19 billion for clean water, flood control, and environmental restoration investments;
•$10 billion for transit and rail to reduce traffic congestion and gas consumption.

At least this part of the bill has been debated somewhat in light of day. The biggest issue here is that construction projects take too long to get going to help the economy. While the claim of "shovel ready" projects may have an impact, no one seems to ask why these "shovel ready" projects were not funded and build before under previous transportation bills. It is likely because in the list of state priorities, they were way down. I recently had a three year construction project near my house that netted an extra lane entering the turnpike (despite no traffic jams prior to the construction), a jub handle which now causes traffic jams and a drainage pond that wouldn't have been necessary had the skipped the project altogether. Oh, and it cost me about $2,000 in suspension work to my vehicle due to the ongoing mess and poor road conditions. Can you say "construction union payback"?

Education for the 21st Century: To enable more children to learn in 21st century classrooms, labs, and libraries to help our kids compete with any worker in the world, this package provides:
•$41 billion to local school districts through Title I ($13 billion), IDEA ($13 billion), a new School Modernization and Repair Program ($14 billion), and the Education Technology program ($1 billion).
•$79 billion in state fiscal relief to prevent cutbacks to key services, including $39 billion to local school districts and public colleges and universities distributed through existing state and federal formulas, $15 billion to states as bonus grants as a reward for meeting key performance measures, and $25 billion to states for other high priority needs such as public safety and other critical services, which may include education.
•$15.6 billion to increase the Pell grant by $500.
•$6 billion for higher education modernization.

Over 140 billion dollars to education. And not one new idea to transform our inner city public schools so that poor kids can learn to work instead of learning to become criminals. Need proof? Front page of the Trentonian this morning had the headline "City School Riot". This money is payback to the teacher's unions who excel at spending public money while resisting any accountability. We don't need
21st century classrooms. We need teachers who can teach, students and parents who want to learn and a commitment from the community that anyone who wants to get in the way of that should be removed from the equation.

Tax Cuts to Make Work Pay and Create Jobs: We will provide direct tax relief to 95 percent of American workers, and spur investment and job growth for American Businesses. [marked up by the Ways and Means Committee]

The first mention of a direct impact item on the economy. And guess what? No money mentioned. No mention of the fact that this tax cut will be coupled with a tax increase for those making more than 250,000 (IE the small businesses that will be doing the alleged hiring). This will do nothing to help the economy and will also do nothing to help business as it is just cleverly worded drivel. And while we are at it, we have mentioned before that given that 48% of workers pay no tax and this plan is to provide tax relief for 95% of workers, this is pure and simply a welfare check for half of the recipients.

Lower Healthcare Costs: To save not only jobs, but money and lives, we will update and computerize our healthcare system to cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes, and help reduce healthcare costs by billions of dollars each year.
•$20 billion for health information technology to prevent medical mistakes, provide better care to patients and introduce cost-saving efficiencies.
•$4.1 billion to provide for preventative care and to evaluate the most effective healthcare treatments.

Does anyone believe that any government plan will decrease the red tape that is crippling the nation's healthcare system and driving doctors to other jobs? Computerization will not reduce medical mistakes and will not save lives. It may make the system more efficient but how about some other ideas. For example, how about spending money on tort reform so that billions of dollars in cost can be wrung out of the healthcare system from frivolous lawsuits? Has anyone considered standard testing methodologies so that doctors do not feel that they have to prescribe tests that purely serve to protect themselves in case of a lawsuit? In any case, this is all long term investment and will have zero impact on the economy.

Help Workers Hurt by the Economy: High unemployment and rising costs have outpaced Americans’ paychecks. We will help workers train and find jobs, and help struggling families make ends meet.
•$43 billion for increased unemployment benefits and job training.
•$39 billion to support those who lose their jobs by helping them to pay the cost of keeping their employer provided healthcare under COBRA and providing short-term options to be covered by Medicaid.
•$20 billion to increase the food stamp benefit by over 13% in order to help defray rising food costs.

Help for out of work employees is not a bad thing. 102 billion dollars seems a bit out of line with the actual unemployment figures I have seen. But wait. 20 billion of this has nothing to do with people out of work. It is an increase to food stamps. 39 billion to Cobra? One of the main reasons businesses are letting people go right now is the rising employee social costs. A big part of that is healthcare. The Cobra system is an exceptionally inefficient way to provide healthcare as it costs the employer the ability to scale back their overall healthcare plan while costing the government far more than it should pay than if it created its own group insurance. Someone should get creative here. But no matter, these outlays are in no way going to stimulate anything. They are a necessary thing to do but won't help the economy.

Save Public Sector Jobs and Protect Vital Services: We will provide relief to states, so they can continue to employ teachers, firefighters and police officers and provide vital services without having to unnecessarily raise middle class taxes.
•$87 billion for a temporary increase in the Medicaid matching rate.
•$4 billion for state and local law enforcement funding.

Save public sector job. That's a winner. Does anyone not get the fact that the people who are losing their jobs right now are the people who pay the bills? And while this plan does nothing for them, it borrows from our children to ensure public sector employees keep their jobs. In New Jersey, private sector employment has been falling for several years while public sector job growth has continued unabated. Enough is enough. And much the same as the other categories, this will have zero impact on the economy.

This is frankly unbelievable. 800 billion dollars and virtually no spending aimed at fixing the economy. This bill is one big spend fest that will do nothing to turn our economy around. It's sad that no one seems to care.

Read this horrific proposed bill in its entirety here.

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