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The idea that the government can spend the economy out of a recession is highly questionable, and even with Senate moderates pushing for changes, the current package is unlikely to see much improvement.
To paraphrase: "I wouldn't support a Keynesian theory in any case", which isn't exatly the best start to reviewing a Keynesian stimulance package, but fair enough I guess, as it haven't really been properly tested (but are very popular world wide atm)
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Here are 50 of the most outrageous items in the stimulus package:
So what was left out? There's a few houndred milliards (billions for you Americans) missing.
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VARIOUS LEFT-WINGERY
Thanks to Some stuff here vill be named VARIOUS RIGHT-WINGERY (VRW for short)
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The easiest targets in the stimulus bill are the ones that were clearly thrown in as a sop to one liberal cause or another, even though the proposed spending would have little to no stimulative effect. The National Endowment for the Arts, for example, is in line for $50 million, increasing its total budget by a third. The unemployed can fill their days attending abstract-film festivals and sitar concerts.
Pork, true. But the VRW here is notable. Take the music industry for example, not many bands outside the mainstream can support themself on thier music. But I guess that counts as sitar concerts...
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Then there are the usual welfare-expansion programs that sound nice but repeatedly fail cost-benefit analyses. The bill provides $380 million to set up a rainy-day fund for a nutrition program that serves low-income women and children, and $300 million for grants to combat violence against women. Laudable goals, perhaps, but where’s the economic stimulus? And the bill would double the amount spent on federal child-care subsidies. Brian Riedl, a budget expert with the Heritage Foundation, quips, “Maybe it’s to help future Obama cabinet secretaries, so that they don’t have to pay taxes on their nannies.”
2 first goes as pork (well rather long term investments to reduce crime). The third one? Child care subsides, as in kindergarten and simular? As in a place to keep your child while the parents are working? Countered by a useless VRW.
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Perhaps spending $6 billion on university building projects will put some unemployed construction workers to work, but how does a $15 billion expansion of the Pell Grant program meet the standard of “temporary, timely, and targeted”? Another provision would allocate an extra $1.2 billion to a “youth” summer-jobs program—and increase the age-eligibility limit from 21 to 24. Federal job-training programs—despite a long track record of failure—come in for $4 billion total in additional funding through the stimulus.
Focus on education keeps people inside schools (thus not taking jobs that doesn't exist atm) and gives them something that can be useful when the job market thaws. It's not really aimed at created jobs true but reducing an excess of workers when it's a job shortage is very simular.
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Of course, it wouldn’t be a liberal wish list if it didn’t include something for ACORN, and sure enough, there is $5.2 billion for community-development block grants and “neighborhood stabilization activities,” which ACORN is eligible to apply for.
I take it they don't like ACORN. True it's long term investment (they are focusing on fixing "ghettoes" if I understand ACORN correctly), thus counts as pork here.
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Finally, the bill allocates $650 million for activities related to the switch from analog to digital TV, including $90 million to educate “vulnerable populations” that they need to go out and get their converter boxes or lose their TV signals. Obviously, this is stimulative stuff: Any economist will tell you that you can’t get higher productivity and economic growth without access to reruns of Family Feud.
Real pork. Should be funded by the TV companies that basically force the switch.
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POORLY DESIGNED TAX RELIEF
The stimulus package’s tax provisions are poorly designed and should be replaced with something closer to what the Republican Study Committee in the House has proposed. Obama would extend some of the business tax credits included in the stimulus bill Congress passed about a year ago, and this is good as far as it goes. The RSC plan, however, also calls for a cut in the corporate-tax rate that could be expected to boost wages, lower prices, and increase profits, stimulating economic activity across the board.
NOT BIG ENOUGH TAX CUT!!!!!! No puns, but obvious VRW
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The RSC plan also calls for a 5 percent across-the-board income-tax cut, which would increase productivity by providing additional incentives to save, work, and invest. An across-the-board payroll-tax cut might make even more sense, especially for low- to middle-income workers who don’t make enough to pay income taxes. Obama’s “Making Work Pay” tax credit is aimed at helping these workers, but it uses a rebate check instead of a rate cut. Rebate checks are not effective stimulus, as we discovered last spring: They might boost consumption, a little, but that’s all they do.
Let me give you a secret. The falling economy is because of
too litte consumption caused by bank failures, house market bubble and the stockmarket crash. This is supposed to increase the consumption, thus make those consumerism wheels run again.
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Finally, the RSC proposal provides direct tax relief to strapped families by expanding the child tax credit, reducing taxes on parents’ investment in the next generation of taxpayers. Obama’s expansion of the child tax credit is not nearly as ambitious. Overall, his plan adds up to a lot of forgone revenue without much stimulus to show for it. Senators should push for the tax relief to be better designed.
NOT BIG ENOUGH TAX CUT!!!!!! No puns, but obvious VRW. Gets even better, as it's a long term investment = counts as pork here => Republicans saying NOT ENOUGH PORK!!!!
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B]STIMULUS FOR THE GOVERNMENT[/B]
Even as their budgets were growing robustly during the Bush administration, many federal agencies couldn’t find the money to keep up with repairs—at least that’s the conclusion one is forced to draw from looking at the stimulus bill. Apparently the entire capital is a shambles. Congress has already removed $200 million to fix up the National Mall after word of that provision leaked out and attracted scorn. But one fixture of the mall—the Smithsonian—dodged the ax: It’s slated to receive $150 million for renovations.
The stimulus package is packed with approximately $7 billion worth of federal building projects, including $34 million to fix up the Commerce Department, $500 million for improvements to National Institutes of Health facilities, and $44 million for repairs at the Department of Agriculture. The Agriculture Department would also get $350 million for new computers—the better to calculate all the new farm subsidies in the bill (see “Pure pork” below).
Hard to say if this is needed or not, but as employing construction workers counts as stimulus it's fine.
I can do that too
Counts as pork though.
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One theme in this bill is superfluous spending items coated with green sugar to make them more palatable. Both NASA and NOAA come in for appropriations that properly belong in the regular budget, but this spending apparently qualifies for the stimulus bill because part of the money from each allocation is reserved for climate-change research. For instance, the bill grants NASA $450 million, but it states that the agency must spend at least $200 million on “climate-research missions,” which raises the question: Is there global warming in space?
Counts as pork. But that big thingy that gives us heat lies in space (I keep it to that, there's more though), which raises the question: Can the article writers come up with puns that doesn't fall apart immidiatly?
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The bottom line is that there is a way to fund government agencies, and that is the federal budget, not an “emergency” stimulus package. As Riedl puts it, “Amount allocated to the Census Bureau? $1 billion. Jobs created? None.”
OMG, I can agree on something here. Still the catchy VRW falls apart if Cencus Bureu employs anybody for the money.
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INCOME TRANSFERS
A big chunk of the stimulus package is designed not to create wealth but to spread it around. It contains $89 billion in Medicaid extensions and $36 billion in expanded unemployment benefits—and this is in addition to the state-budget bailout (see “Rewarding state irresponsibility” below).
The Medicaid extension is structured as a temporary increase in the federal match, but make no mistake: Like many spending increases in the stimulus package, this one has a good chance of becoming permanent. As for extending unemployment benefits through the downturn, it might be a good idea for other reasons, but it wouldn’t stimulate economic growth: It would provide an incentive for job-seekers to delay reentry into the workforce.
True, not part of the intent of the bill, thus pork. Mainly based on a igeological differance. And the thesis that everything temporal is always ending up permanent. Not without point, but for the authors sake I hope they haven't been pushing for temporary tax cuts.
Will shorten it here. Some of is true pork and nothing belongs here.
Most of it will probably end up under the category pork (and some of it true pork), but almost every market shift will cost money during a transition period.
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REWARDING STATE IRRESPONSIBILITY
Can't analyse enough here but a lot of it does seem like pork.
