The Growth of Government is the Loss of Liberty
Americans, your nation is being sold before your eyes. Your children and grandchildren will be in debt their whole lives to pay off the expenses of the final month of the Bush Administration, and the first week of the Obama Administration.
The Orwellian-named ‘fiscal stimulus package’ takes money from investment markets, typically the most powerful engine of new job creation, or borrows from China. According to this article in the Wall Street Journal, some of the items in this package, where the government, not the consumers, will spend your hard-earned money:
Conservatives will note that increased spending in the BILLIONS on nutrition programs, welfare cash payments, unemployment insurance, COBRA insurance, public housing, foodstamps, Medicaid, and so on take money from the productive sectors of the economy and "invest" it in areas which are not expected to see any return on investment. Even a dedicated Democrate who favors these programs must admit that they are welfare programs, not arguably related to economic stimulus.
Catholics will be pleased to learn that stimulus funds are to be used for abortions and contraceptives which, in the lingo of Newspeak, are called "Family Planning". Speaker Pelosi (when interviewed on THIS WEEK WITHOUT DAVID BRINKEY, see here) defends this move on the grounds that the population having fewer children saves the government money, which therefore stimulates the economy. How Red Chinese of her.
82.7 billion — that is a BILLION with a B, or ten to the ninth power — is to be given to non-income-tax payers by way of earned income tax credits: it is merely a redistribution of wealth scheme, taking money from productive people and giving to those who, perhaps through no fault of their own, are unproductive. While a socialist might argue that charity to the poor is morally beneficial to the taxman who uses other people’s money for this indulgence, no one can argue that it helps the economy rather than the reverse.
Matt Drudge here reports that the House Democrats’ bill includes $335 million for sexually transmitted disease education and prevention programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He comments:
In a related story, the White House this morning phoned the Citicorp banking group (Citigroup) and ordered them not to take possession of a corporate jet which the financial company bought and paid for in 2005, on the grounds that, (as Congressman Mickey Edwards explained this morning on the Laura Ingraham show) now that the government was a lender to the banking firm, it had the authority to control daily decisions on mattters both great and small.
Surely I am not the only one who recalls that cries and lamentations from the Left that the costs of the War in Iraq were too expensive for our economy to bear? Surely I am not the only one who recalls the same lamentations, uttered throughout the entire 1970’s, that the Space Program was wasteful of monies that should have gone for social programs? (This latter meme was so common that it even lapped over into children cartoons). The amounts spent on the moonshot are trivial compared to the billions and trillions being spent now.
Will this stimulate the economy? Of course not. Not even in the failed theory of Keynes would spending tax dollars on the NEA stimulate anything. Keynes, at least, offered that public works: road and monuments and so on, would be built with the taxpayers capital.
None of this is even alleged to have any effect on the economy until two or three years have passed. In contrast, if corporate taxes were suspended for 2009, and income tax reduced by half, companies could and would immediately have funds available to retain workers, and taxpayers would have more money in their next paycheck, as the amount withheld was reduced. Such an effect would be felt immediately, and the money would be in the hands of those proven to be able to lend and spend profitably and wisely, namely, those who work and those who create jobs.
None of this is even alleged to be Constitutional. Someone point to where on the list of enumerated powers in the Constitution where the soveriegn states gave the general government the power to spend money on promoting abortions and preventing venereal diseases.
Not a single Republican name should be attached to this pork-stuffed, mad-spending-spree bill. If the Republicans took a public stand in opposition, and distanced themselves from the trainwreck of the economy (which would require drumming Bush and McCain out of the conservative movement, perhaps) they might be able to win seats during the midterm elections two years hence, particularly if they ran on a ‘Contract With America’ type platform vowing the tax cuts and program cuts which are the only thing the government can do to help and ailing economy.
Conservatives, please write your Congressmen, or phone, or email. The bottom line amount of this horrifyingly unwise bill, this abomination, was raised from over 80 billion to over 90 billion just during the time it took me to prepare and write this journal entry.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
