…just not all of it and not exactly to the people it was taken from.
Yep, the Congress is promising an approximately $150B bill to return a portion of what it has ripped from productive citizens’ pockets, just not necessarily to those it took the money from (the aforesaid productive citizens), of course.
So, if the train stays on the track, expect perhaps as much as $600 per person in “beer money” to be distributed in a purely socialist fashion sometime this summer.
*pfui*
Big stinking deal. We’d be better off were that amount of “mugged” funds spent in a WPA-like investment in energy infrastructure: nuclear plants (MIT has placed the plans for a modular pebble bed reactor in the public domain–set up an assembly line and tell the Saudis and Chavezes of the world to go suck a sour lemon); new, more efficient, oil refineries; biomass to oil or methanol plants, etc.; conversion of railroads to electicity (with enough PBRs, that’d be a real step toward energy independence).
All that could be funded out of congresscritters favorite pork, without raising a dime of taxes. HEck, use ONLY pork and we could probably start paying down the national debt, too…
With the $100+/barrel oil now being held over our heads dealt with, other steps to really help the economy in substantive ways”
1. Abolish the IRS/16th Amendment in favor of the FairTax
2. Institute a 10% across-the-board import duty on ALL imports, no exceptions.
Those two things alone would make American products much, much more competitive in the international markets and start rebuilding America’s manufacturing capabilities, providing even more jobs, over and above the “jobs” (government funded jobs are parasitic on the economy–OK, a few offer some symbiotic benefits) that building new energy infrastructure would provide.
And it’s jobs, not government handbacks (or handouts, for those who didn’t pay in) that would be the real economic stimulus we need.
Of course, expecting something sensible from Congress is like expecting fairy dust to make pigs fly. First, you have to find the fairy dust (No, you can’t get any from homosexual activists. They don’t even pollinate). Then you have to catch the pig. Then you have to get clearance from the FAA to conduct fairy dust-flying pig experiments, an environmental impact assessment from the EPA, an OSHA evaluation of risks to the flight crew, etc., and an ASPCA/PETA signoff on the plan…
Come to think of it, that sounds a lot easier and more likely to happen than Congress growing some brains and then finding the balls to actually do the right thing.
BTW, I blame Rosemary for getting my crank turning on this topic. 🙂 She talked about the Fed cut, its possible effect on the housing market, and pressure on congresscritters to bail out irresponsible home “buyers” (who really, for the most part, just went into more debt than they could afford to “buy” a house they hadn’t earned and couldn’t afford to maintain).
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