One giant leap towards big government
Yesterday was a very sad day in American history and a huge defeat for all who enjoy the liberties and freedoms as opposed to the tyranny of government control. The house passed the giant “economic stimulus” plan. This has to be the biggest scam pulled over on the American people in our country’s 200 plus year history. Anyone who thinks this is actually intended to “stimulate” the economy is a fool. Sure, that may end up being a side effect, but that is clearly not the primary effect it will have. This bill is pork spending on a massive scale. The seemingly endless list of earmarks reads like a giant “thank you” card with a payback check to those who ushered the Democrats into power. More impacting is that it will do nothing more than expand the reach and power of government and further the socialistic cause in America.
Stimulus? Please! Lets take a look at this. Part of the funds are reserved to send a $500 stimulus check out to registered tax payers. Many of these people don’t even pay that much in taxes to begin with, so we can chalk that up to a welfare check. As for as it “stimulating” the economy, recall how much the $600 check Bush sent out last year did. Net result: nothing. Also, there is big dollars heading to the school systems. Think of the children! Who could disagree with more funding for schools? Well, if you recall, more spending is not the solution for our broken education system. Net result for the economy: little to none. What about the building of parks and the improvements to freeways and infrastructure? This is very much the kind of government expansion that happened during the great depression under the New Deal. It is still debated if this provided any tangible economic effect seeing the depression continued throughout the New Deal years and “recovery” came in the form of a world war. Net result: questionable and probably not worth the cost.
So where is this money going to go? I’m sure portions of this are going to filter out into the economy. Will this provide economic gain for you and I? Highly unlikely. The financial bailout was suppose to allow the banks to open up loans to the masses again. Has that worked? No. Like the bailout, much of this economic stimulus will land in the pockets of CEOs, developers, union bosses, political financiers, local government bigwigs, and the likes as a form of pork spending. I’m sure this will stimulate the economy to some degree, but only in the ways these people-of-power deem appropriate. In the big picture, the free market economy looses out. Real stimulus would have been in the form of a tax holiday for everyone. That would mean, you and I would be able to stimulate the economy how we see fit. In addition those small and medium size businesses, that are the backbone of America, would have extra funds to hire and expand their business. Instead, this stimulus bill is a step towards social communism where the government has the power to choose who wins and looses.
In the end, this stimulus bill will end up costing over one trillion dollars. Yes, that’s “trillion” with a “T”. This is money that the government does not have. The big question is where will that money come from? The government certainly has the power to print more money, but that does not change the amount of wealth out in the economy and will only end up in inflation. More than likely, we will borrow the money. They will probably start by issuing more bonds and government securities for American banks and individuals to invest in. This is completely counter productive seeing that we will be taking money out of the economy only to pump it back in. We’ll also borrow money from other countries like China, which seems to be the trendy thing to do nowadays. Again, talking money from one pocket and putting it in another on the global economic scale. Not to mention, this sets a dangerous trend of becoming indebted to our adversaries.
The really sad part of this is the impact it will have on our future. One day, the time will come to pay this money back. This will only ensure that economic hardship will follow us for years to come. The burden of this bill will fall on our children and grandchildren. Speaking of “think of the children”, this is the real impact it will have on them. They will suffer the results in the form of massive tax hikes and trying economic times. My hope is that they will one day take the government to task for the mess that will be handed down to them.
