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GOP Announces It Will Oppose Obama's Latest $300 Billion "Jobs Plan"
In a move that will surprise exactly nobody, the Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions has signaled that "Republicans would oppose the jobs plan President Obama is expected to announce Thursday, saying it would only put the United States further in debt at a time when the debt is already weighing on the economy." So while nobody even knows yet just what the full presidential proposal to create "millions of jobs" looks like in its entirety, we do already know it will almost certainly not happen courtesy of a republican controlled congress. As a reminder, the US is currently supposed to be laboring under a regime of austerity (more in its latest, and vastly watered down Italian iteration than real cost cutting but still) and thus it will be rather complicated for the GOP to explain why the party is cutting with one hand and spending more with the other. As such, any hopes for a quick and decisive passage of laws to build more bridges to nowhere are about to be dashed. From The Hill: "There’s no doubt in my mind that the debt that we’ve now incurred is already weakening our economy,” Sessions said on the Senate floor. “It comes to a point that you can’t keep borrowing in a futile attempt to stimulate the economy when the increased debt itself is weakening the economy.” Cue Keynesians of all shapes and sizes kicking and screaming how more stimulus this time will be different and how one last Heroin injection is really all it takes.
From The Hill:
Sessions read one press report on the Senate floor that said Obama could propose as much as $300 billion in new spending in his Thursday night address to a joint session of Congress. According to that report, Obama is expected to propose extending payroll tax cuts for another year, and extending expiring jobless benefits. Those two measures combined will cost $170 billion.
He may also propose a tax credit for companies to hire unemployed workers, costing $30 billion, and a public works program that is expected to cost at least $50 billion for such items as school construction.
Other reports say Obama's total proposals could total less than $300 billion, with some putting the number at $200 billion.
There is still, however, some hope: cut and spend.
Regardless, Sessions indicated Republicans will oppose any new spending plan that is not offset by spending cuts. The senator noted that while Obama has talked about the need to reduce federal spending, Obama is not expected to describe how to pay for these new programs in his Thursday speech.
If the debt ceiling debate highlighted, it is that the US population is no longer that stupid to realize that $2.4 trillion in deficit spending now, offset by $100 billion in cuts in the next 9 years and about $2.3 trillion in the final year, makes absolutely no sense.
Yet unfortunately this is what will likely end up happening. The final outcome will be that between this, and the next 10 or so fiscal stimulus programs, all of which will fail, will be to back-end load about $100 trillion in spending cuts in 2020, a year when the government will probably collect one 50th of this in revenue.
At some point someone will ask how this makes any logical sense.
But not yet.
For now, look for much more posturing both tomorrow, and in two weeks, when the "transitory" $14.69 trillion debt ceiling is breached about half a month ahead of schedule.
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Some perky boobies..
Rick-roll! But classy.
This should put a lift in your step(or your keyboard): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP8nnCqK4gE
What? No more "infrastructure" investments like the now bankrupt Solyndra corporation? (See Bruce's excellent article today.) What a crying shame!
Solyndra; another 'green win' for Capitalist Socialist. Stupid git. If it can't survive in the private sector when unhampered by gov't regulation and it can't survive with a huge bonus from taxpayers, it deserves to die. Next!
Being a Ph.D student in the field of semiconductors I am fully aware that solar technology isnt competitive to oil at the moment. But a shift will come. If it's not brought on by technological innovation a shift from oil will be brought on by increasing demand and decreasing supply. Solar is a good bet for what will eventually become the primary energy source. Just think about it, in one second, across the area of the earth, the sun delivers all the power neccessary for our current society to run for a year. I think solar is coming, but it's not time just yet.
Anyway, this still doesnt defeat my point that infrastructure construction projects would be a good public investment right now.
Yes it does defeat your point but you're sticking to it because that's all you can do. Innovation and production come mainly from private enterprise. Most gov't 'assistance' to that comes only in the form of tax breaks so it's not so expensive to grow a business that it can't overcome the hurdle of regulation or taxation. Then gov't looks at it as if it's a 'gift' that the corporation received and that gov't was the creator of the jobs. Solyndra(and see BK's article) was another selective recipient of taxpayer welfare where none was warranted. And look at the result. If the market can't bear the costs then it's not the right time or they need to take a different approach or forego growth until the markets support it. A client built a new building in a county next door to it's existing facility, all told the costs of permits, impact fees, moving turtles, road modifications, etc. were over $1M, fully 15% of the buildings cost. As a final insult, the county building department demanded a $50k bond to hand over the CO. The bond is paid back over 5 years and was to ensure the business didn't just close it's doors or move. This from a family-owned business that's been in the area 25 years. You would think that $1M would have gone much farther in hiring new employees than padding a bloated county gov't, one that is now raising taxes again because 'It's the economy stupid!' and they can't plan from one year to the next so their first thought is to get more for less. Now they're promoting a 'business-friendly' office park which is subsidized from those same tax dollars taken from one company and selectively given to another. That's basically theft. And a reason why 'infrastucture' projects are a boondoggle. Counties here can vote in penny increases in taxes which are used to fund projects called 'infrastructure'. Once a dog park, walkway, bike path, or median is treed and the project is done, the bill for maintaining that goes right to the county budget. So the taxpayer gets a new-fangled spot for their dog to shit and the remaining taxpayers now get higher tax bills because the project fund doesn't pay for maintenance only the initial cost. So yeah, build yourself into bankruptcy, great idea, anti-genius.
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But, at least the investors (i.e. George Kaiser the billionaire) will be first in line for payouts. So that's good, no?
Lots of blah blah blah here.
Until we understand that exponential growth is no longer possible nothing will make sense and every policy from every party will fail.
GOP or DRP is a same shit. Both want 330 million Americas out of 340 millions to be, beggars.
Anyone who believes anything coming out of the RNC and especially Jeff Sessions is brain dead. I am going to try to explain this to you all one more time. This entire situation that we find ourselves in today is a conspiracy by the RNC. Read my lips, I WAS AT SOME OF THE MEETINGS in the late 90s/early 2000s were a plan to out spend the Democrats was discussed by high ranking Republicans. I saw this with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears. It is the reason I stopped being a party activist. At the time I just saw it as a harebrained scheme, but now, I see it was the first step in a scheme to bankrupt the country, blame it on the Democrats, and turn all the wealth over to their top 10% buddies. I can not believe people in this country are falling for this crap.One of the guys who helped bankrupt the USA stands up in the Senate and says we are too broke to help American workers get jobs and folks cream their Levis. We're doomed.
Believe me or not it doesn't change the facts that those meetings took place and that plan was hatched. According to Wikipedia these are five of Senator Session's largest contributors.
Southern Company utility firm, Balch & Bingham law firm, Harbert Management investment firm, Drummond Company coal mining firm, and WPP Group, a UK-based communications services company. Who would have thunk it, that there would be two energy companies, a financial services firm, and a company from Great Britain. Isn't that interesting, especially the Brit, no wonder he's against American workers and for free trade.
300 Billion Dollars?
300 Million Citizens in the USA?
What would that work out to per US Citizen? One million?
If that is the case, I can easily hire about 14 Contractors this week to do a variety of work on my new place. There would be a few dozen people crawling about like ants with tools and material.
It works out to one thousand per. You could hire one republican for half a day to come lie to you about their plan to put people back to work.
Shit.
Now I have to fire all my contractors and do the damn thing myself.
I heard Obama is going to announce Jeff Immelt as the new jobs creation czar tomorrow night. Can it be true?
If stimulus is so flippin' important, why don't they try spending all the shovel-ready money approved in 2009. Of $968B approved, to date $710.8B has been spent.
That leaves $257.2B unspent.
Of course, this is all a waste and should be canceled and no new stimulus, but if they are going to ask for second helpings of ice creasm, they should at least eat all of their first helping.
http://www.recovery.gov/pages/textview.aspx?List={EB595CCA-D93F-48F4-AF96-11E2D41DE73D}&xsl=FundingOverview/FundingOverviewChartTextView.xsl
Category Funds Paid Out Tax Benefits $298.5B Contracts, Grants, Loans $205.2B Entitlements$207.1B