Economic Recovery Bill Still Fails Economic Recovery Bill Test

[JimofPennsylvan]

The Economic Recovery Bill is getting better in the Senate but it still fails the good bill test. Still, there is too much in the bill that doesn’t have to do with economic recovery, will grow government unwisely and doesn’t do enough for future generations of Americans that will be paying the $800 billion price tag for this piece of legislation. More moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans have to step up here and stand out from their caucuses and follow their conscience on this bill.

The funding for “No Child Left Behind”, “Higher Education Assistance” and the like doesn’t belong in this bill, from a “doing the right thing” standpoint it has nothing whatsoever to do with economic recovery. Especially, in light of the meager, and in light of the initial promises of this bill deceptive, spending on infrastructure spending in this bill. This bill was sold to the American people as if it was going to imitate the government spending behind the creation of the federal highway system in America in the 1950’s, what a joke. Experts tell us the public spending on bridges and highways with this bill this year will be underwhelming, that is, it will be below prior years spending considering state and local cuts. Our children and their children and their children’s children will be paying the glacial size off the chart size price tag of this bill at least our present leaders could provide a significant expanse in the nation’s infrastructure system to justify this to them. Furthermore, America is going to need stimulus further than two years out, the economy has shed three million jobs since the beginning of 2008 –types of jobs that won’t be easily replaced, infrastructure spending can give the country that long-term lift.

To Republicans, America doesn’t want to hear your broken record about only tax cuts, especially ones that favor the wealthy and big businesses and rely on this idiotic trickle down economic theory. Nor does America want to hear that you’ll only accept stimulus that gets injected into the economy within two years – its stupid it defies common sense and proves unequivocally Republicans are playing politics with this bill. Republicans have to delve into this bill and cut out the fat, the non-economic recovery spending, the spending that will just bloat the government and the spending that won’t survive a good cost benefit analysis test. America needs its Senators putting partisan matters aside and working together and letting the merits of the issues guide their actions.

 

[Old Rocks]

It would never pass either the present Democrats, or the Republicans, but what we really need is much more spending on a total rebuild of our grid. Putting it out to areas that have vast potential in renewables, wind, geothermal, and solar. Making it a true distributed grid, that can pick up power from someone's 5 kw solar installation as well as a multi gw nuclear plant.

That woud cost nearly as much as the whole of the present bill, but would address our future energy needs, national security concerning our dependence on foriegn energy, and global warming. It would creat millions of jobs, and whole new industries. And even create products that we could export to other countries, addressing our balance of payments problem.

 

[garyd]

Except that involving the government in that sort of project would almost certain triple the cost and have the effectiveness.

The biggest problem this country has with the power grid is in a certain sense analogous to the problems we have with Mass transit. We simply have too much area to cover and too small a population density over much of it. For instance Tulsa County has just under 600,000 people but the county has also 2000 square miles yeidling an average population density of 300 per square mile.

New York County has 23 square miles and a population of just under 1.7million for a population density of nearly 70,000 per square miles. Then there is Albany County Wyoming with a population of a hair over 32k and just under 43 hundred square miles or 7 + people per square mile.

This is not Western Europe and solutions for Western Europe where population densities from the Elbe in the North of Germany to the Mediteraenian Sea are Routinely in excess of 500 per square mile
compared to the US average of around 25.