Devil In The Details
Published January 28th, 2009 in Economy, Politics


This is a long one…but these might be things you may not know (or want to know) about the so-called ‘stimulus’ package, collected from around the web:



The ‘stimulus package’ contains:



$650 million for more digital TV coupons.



$276 million to fix the computer systems at the State Department.



$650 million to repair dilapidated Forest Service facilities.



$2.5 billion to upgrade low-income housing.



$400 million for NASA scientists to conduct climate change research. You mean study so-called Global Warming™?



$426 million to construct facilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.



$800 million to clean up Superfund sites. Didn’t we have those sites before now?



$150 million for the Coast Guard to repair or remove bridges deemed a hazard to navigation.



$6.7 billion to renovate and improve energy efficiency at federal buildings.



$400 million to replace the Social Security Administration’s 30-year-old National Computer Center



$600 million for new cars for the federal government. (at an average of $30,000 each, that’s 20,000 new cars)



$50 million in funding for the National Endowment of the Arts, because we obviously need more religious paintings made from poop and macaroni noodles.



$44 million for repairs to U.S. Department of Agriculture headquarters, which is nowhere near any agriculture.



$200 million for the National Mall, including $21 million for sod.

Only 2.7 percent, or $22.3 billion of the overall package, is dedicated to small business tax relief.



The plan establishes at least 32 new government programs at a cost of over $136 billion. That means more than a third of this plan’s spending provisions are dedicated to creating new government programs.



The total cost of this one piece of legislation is almost as much as the annual discretionary budget for the entire federal government.

Although the proposal has been billed as a transportation and infrastructure investment package, in actuality only $30 billion of the bill – or three percent – is for road and highway spending. A recent study from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that only 25 percent of infrastructure dollars can be spent in the first year, making the one year total less than $7 billion.



Even though the legislation contains at least 152 separate spending proposals, the authors of the plan can only say that 34 have any chance at keeping or growing jobs.

Much of the funding within the proposal will go to programs that already have large, unexpended balances. For example, the bill provides $1 billion for Community Development Block Grants – a program that already has $16 billion on hand. States also are sitting on some $9 billion in unused highway funds – funds that Congress is prepared to rescind later this year.

The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the legislation increases by seven million the number of people who get a check back from the IRS that exceeds what they paid in payroll and income taxes.

Almost one-third of the so-called “tax relief” in the bill is spending in disguise, meaning that true tax relief makes up only 24 percent of the total package – not the 40 percent that President Obama had requested.

$825 billion is just the beginning – many want to spend even more taxpayer dollars on ‘stimulus 3.’



Do you want the kicker? The absolute end-all, be-all of government pork gone absolutely insane?  Do you remember ACORN? The far-left asshats that committed rampant voter registration fraud during the election and helped intimidate banks into lending money to wholly unqualified borrowers…wait, isn’t that one of the things that got us into this whole economic mess? Hmmm…wait for it:



Congress is making groups like ACORN eligible for a $4.19 billion pot of money for “neighborhood stabilization activities.”



This is what Speaker “No Grip” Pelosi, her well-heeled cronies and the new adminisration consider to be stimulus? Seriously?



If you’re not losing your mind right now, you probably lost it long ago.


http://www.scooteroi.com/?p=942

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Looks like a great use of my money.

Quoted:
REDO your W4 and claim max exemptions (12 or so would do).  It's a form of tax protest.  They'll get it eventually just no right now.  :)

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And one of the highest paid programs is to repair the slums.  If the motherfuckers didnt destroy them in the first place, we wouldnt have to pay again.

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A lot of those look like reasonable expenses when funds are available, but I don't see the urgency of getting them in the stimulus bill.  And of course some of them are just disgusting.

They're just shoving through everything they want to do over the next 8 years.  It's like Bush sending troops to Iraq, Afghanistan, passing the Patriot Act, no child left behind, tax cuts, etc., all in one bill in his first two weeks in office.  So now that they have the "everything" done, they can start a new "to do" list.  Be afraid, be very afraid.

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Repair?  Buddy they are building new!  They closed a government housing project in da hood near where I live and fenced it off.  I've driven by it when I feel like getting shot at and it looks OK on the outside but I'm sure the place is destroyed inside plus squatters, crack heads, etc. since it closed.  

They'll level the place and build a new one.  They won't even bother fixing it up.

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You know, if they squeeze all this into the stimulus bill, think how small their regular budget could be.  They just might be setting themselves up for a "fiscally responsible" annual budget.  If this is nearly a trillion dollars to be spent over 4 or 5 years, that's a couple hundred billion they don't have to put in the standard budget.  Then depending on the election 2012, if they win they will continue to do the same and if they lose they will just point out how the Republicans increased their budget.

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The only flaw I see in that theory is that they won't stop ........................................they are gonna rape pillage and plunder from this point forward.................................

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Repair?  Buddy they are building new!  They closed a government housing project in da hood near where I live and fenced it off.  I've driven by it when I feel like getting shot at and it looks OK on the outside but I'm sure the place is destroyed inside plus squatters, crack heads, etc. since it closed.  

They'll level the place and build a new one.  They won't even bother fixing it up.