Obama Stimulus Package Could Grow To $850 Billion
Though President-elect Obama is taking some time off to spend with family and work on his golf game in Hawaii, CBS News correspondent Chip Reid reports that the president-elect's advisers are working overtime on a massive government spending plan that is getting bigger by the day.
Sources on Capitol Hill told Reid that the stimulus package could grow to at least $850 billion, which is about double the cost, in today's dollars, of the interstate highway system and more than the United States has spent on the Iraq war.
With consumers not spending, and more and more businesses laying off workers, some economists say there's no alternative.
"Government is the difference between a bad recession and very bad depression," Mark Zandi of Moody's told CBS News.
But deficit hawks on the Hill and some conservative economists argue that continuing to throw money at the economic meltdown will only make it worse.
"It didn't work the first time, it's not going to work this time," said J.D. Foster of the Heritage Foundation. "The only thing that it has in common is that it's going to leave us with a hangover."
Democratic leaders are hoping to move the stimulus package through Congress at rapid speed. They want to have it ready for Mr. Obama's signature about ten days after he's sworn in as president.
Sources on Capitol Hill told Reid that the stimulus package could grow to at least $850 billion, which is about double the cost, in today's dollars, of the interstate highway system and more than the United States has spent on the Iraq war.
With consumers not spending, and more and more businesses laying off workers, some economists say there's no alternative.
"Government is the difference between a bad recession and very bad depression," Mark Zandi of Moody's told CBS News.
But deficit hawks on the Hill and some conservative economists argue that continuing to throw money at the economic meltdown will only make it worse.
"It didn't work the first time, it's not going to work this time," said J.D. Foster of the Heritage Foundation. "The only thing that it has in common is that it's going to leave us with a hangover."
Democratic leaders are hoping to move the stimulus package through Congress at rapid speed. They want to have it ready for Mr. Obama's signature about ten days after he's sworn in as president.
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See all 22 CommentsAnd where will this money come from? A magic government money tree? Government CANNOT ''invest'' ANYTHING without first disinvesting somewhere else (like the private sector).
Government cannot create wealth out of thin air.
Exactly my point. It is a fraudulent scheme.
Government CANNOT magically help the economy with ''stimulus'' without DE-STIMULIZING the private sector from where the money comes.
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With that logic, how about make it 200 Trillion and we can all just retire.
But you''re not even going to give him a chance to try. Sounds like you''ve already made up your mind about this administration, before it''s even began. How patriotic.
HOW? With more bloated spending and reckless behavior? Are you serious? He has already said that balanced budgets are out the window. What a freaking hypocrite.
Posted by jtmangum49
Really, professor? You talk like he''s already president, and has been for sometime. NEWSFLASH, Einstein: Bush is still in charge. Any money that has been thrown anywhere has been under HIS watch.
So simmer down, and give Obama some time to fix the last eight years of bloated spending and reckless behavior that has endangered our country.
After receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation''s largest banks say they can''t track exactly how they''re spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.
"We''ve lent some of it. We''ve not lent some of it. We''ve not given any accounting of, ''Here''s how we''re doing it,''" said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We''re declining to.
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The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what''s the plan for the rest?
None of the banks provided specific answers.
What the politicial elites refuse to inform the dumb masses of is that any government ''stimulus'' results in a private sector DE-STIMULUS.
The government does NOT have its own money, folks. Every dollar it gets comes out of the pockets of those who work for it and earn it.
Learn Your History Clinton Also Helped A Lot
Thanks Reagan, Bush I, Bush II
Typical, self-serving, unpatriotic right-wing neocons.
Posted by ReaganiteGOP at 06:29 AM : Dec 23, 2008
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Have you lost your mind? Regan was responsable for elimination of many middle class tax deductions resulting in huge middle class tax increases and spent his way out of a recession with record deposits and debt.
Typical, self-serving, unpatriotic right-wing neocons.
The New Deal of the 30s that Obama so proudly emulates was, in-fact, a colossal economic failure. FDR never achieved an employment level under 14%... and averaged 17%.
FDR''s own Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau stated in 1939:
"We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. . . . We have never made good on our promises. . . . I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started...and an enormous debt to boot!"
All in stark contrast to the proven Reagan Recovery of the 1980s, which brought us back from almost 11% unemployment (50% worse than today), plus double-digit inflation and interest rates.
Reagan accomplished this with spending cuts and tax cuts, in addition to deregulation and incentives for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
He created 16M jobs...growing the country''s GDP by almost 30% in the process. Those kind of results makes one wonder why Obama''s trillion-dollar spending plan would impress ANY-body, with his pledged 3M new and "saved" jobs ... a paltry figure 11M jobs shy of The Gipper''s towering accomplishment.
http://reaganiterepublicanresistance.blogspot.com/
You cannot mandate salary cuts, but you CAN raise taxes on the rich, then put the money into services that benefit the middle class and that currently cost them - such as health care.
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