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On Feb. 13, 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 at the urging of President Obama, who signed it into law four days later. A direct response to the economic crisis, the Recovery Act has three immediate goals:
Create new jobs and save existing ones
Spur economic activity and invest in long-term growth
Foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending
The Recovery Act intends to achieve those goals by:
Providing $288 billion in tax cuts and benefits for millions of working families and businesses
Increasing federal funds for education and health care as well as entitlement programs (such as extending unemployment benefits) by $224 billion
Making $275 billion available for federal contracts, grants and loans
Requiring recipients of Recovery funds to report quarterly on how they are using the money. All the data is posted on Recovery.gov so the public can track the Recovery funds.
I suggest those who want to be informed read the link to Recovery.gov and not take Fox News and Foxfyer as the final word. Cherry picked stats and facts may fool some of the people all of the time (a shout-out to CrusaderFrank and Stepanie) but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
If we accept as true the examples provided by Fox, it is clear that they are some of the more egregious and silly expenditures of stimulus funds. And, of course that is the intent of Fox, not to inform but to put forth their political agenda.
But consider, most of those projects spent funds on goods and services, and isn't that stimulating the economy? People & Business earn income, which was spent on rent, food and other goods and services and taxes were paid and returned to local, state and Federal coffers. No matter how silly the OP wants this to appear it did what it was autorized to do.
I see, everyday, construction sites where workers and heavy machinary, manufactured goods - steal and concrete - are being used as part of the American Recovery and Reconstruction Act to build and improve roads, bridges and transportation systems, parts of our infrastructure ignored for decades and in decay.
Remember, as President Obama said today, "if you get into a car and want to go forward, put the car in D; if you wish to go backwards, select R.
High unemployment and rising debt, wry. Yes.....the stimulus has worked wonders.
The price to earnings is staggering with the stimulus. There is no way you can spin that no matter how catchy your D's and R's are. Your a blind fool, wry
SPIN:
"It could be Worse"---April, 2010
"Its Bush's Fault"-----June, 2010
"Republicans have no ideas"------August, 2010
"Solving Problems is Hard"----October, 2010
"Republicans are Obstructionists"------December, 2010
On Feb. 13, 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 at the urging of President Obama, who signed it into law four days later. A direct response to the economic crisis, the Recovery Act has three immediate goals:
Create new jobs and save existing ones
Spur economic activity and invest in long-term growth
Foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending
The Recovery Act intends to achieve those goals by:
Providing $288 billion in tax cuts and benefits for millions of working families and businesses
Increasing federal funds for education and health care as well as entitlement programs (such as extending unemployment benefits) by $224 billion
Making $275 billion available for federal contracts, grants and loans
Requiring recipients of Recovery funds to report quarterly on how they are using the money. All the data is posted on Recovery.gov so the public can track the Recovery funds.
I suggest those who want to be informed read the link to Recovery.gov and not take Fox News and Foxfyer as the final word. Cherry picked stats and facts may fool some of the people all of the time (a shout-out to CrusaderFrank and Stepanie) but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
So we ignore the reports from Fox, CBS, ABC and elsewhere and believe the administration when they tell us they're doing a great job?
You're serious about that aren't you.
Half the money hasn't been spent yet, and it was an emergency to pass the bill or the whole world would collapse.
And Obama was there to expand both the wars and look at a possible new one. Conservatives by the end of Bushs president mostly hated him, he had very little support for a reason. He lied and ran the country into the ground, now Obama continues many of the same policies only in many cases more extreme.
Neocon = Religious Liberal.
The reason that Bush lost support among Conservatives is that Bush is NOT a Conservative.
Bush is a free spending Liberal who never saw a budget he couldn't bust.
The Big 0, on the other hand, clearly never saw a budget. Period. He just spends like there's no tomorrow.
A 1.5 TRILLION dollare deficite???!!??!!
The upcoming deficites only get bigger. He's killing the Golden Goose and running up the tab. What a putz.
You are incorrect.
Congress spends money.
Democrats Control Congress.
The problem is not in Washington, it's us.
Fact- nobody is going out to find jobs
More people stop looking for work- Market Dispatches - MSN Money
Fact- Small businesses are too scared to create jobs
Fact- States like mine, Tennessee, aren't spending the stimulus money the way they were suppose to.
Study: Tennessee lags in stimulus spending - Nashville Business Journal
I hate to say this, but it appears that America, as a whole, decided to either go on a vacation or go on strike. This is not President Obama's fault, it's ours.
We don't have the balls to roll the dice. Food for thought.
In my business I deal with mostly small businesses including a lot of contractors.
First a short term project like installing windows in a closed building provides work for at most a few days. The administration can claim 'jobs created' for those few days but you soon have everybody back on the unemployment roles. There is no way anybody will convince me that such government spending stimulates anything more than the deficit and national debt. And they are being counted as 'jobs created' and they shouldn't be.
Is it better than paying unemployment for those few days? Not if the taxpayer doesn't get full value for the dollars spent.
So according to your own link here:
Study: Tennessee lags in stimulus spending - Nashville Business Journal
the red tape, required environmental studies etc., per usual mean that government contracts will see many delays and many didn't happen last year or this year and will finally be implemented in subsequent years and the blame for that is squarely on the shoulders of the Federal government.
So back to those small businesses, they're telling me they aren't going to get ambitious about much of anything until they know what the tax consequences will be next year and beyond or what the healthcare mandates will do to them, etc. etc. etc. The government keeps moving the markers from week to week and that isn't anybody but the government's fault either.
You don't roll the dice if you don't know what the payoff is going to be. And you sure don't roll the dice if it means you have to pay even more than what you are prepared to gamble.
Mudwhistle said:It's even higher then that. Count all of the folks working part-time instead of full-time then it goes even higher.
Hate to break it to you, but hiring part-timers won't change, even as the economy picks up and jobs become available. The private sector has discovered that they can pay people less and demand more productivity because of the general fear of losing a job (any job). A full-time job with benefits will be nonexistent in a couple of years.And apparently there's a lot of people who have held onto their downsized jobs that intend to quit and look for new jobs once the economy gets better. According to a Harris Interactive poll, 48% of those who plan to job hunt are mainly motivated by a lack of trust in their current employers. Gee, I wonder why.
On Feb. 13, 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 at the urging of President Obama, who signed it into law four days later. A direct response to the economic crisis, the Recovery Act has three immediate goals:
Create new jobs and save existing ones
Spur economic activity and invest in long-term growth
Foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending
The Recovery Act intends to achieve those goals by:
Providing $288 billion in tax cuts and benefits for millions of working families and businesses
Increasing federal funds for education and health care as well as entitlement programs (such as extending unemployment benefits) by $224 billion
Making $275 billion available for federal contracts, grants and loans
Requiring recipients of Recovery funds to report quarterly on how they are using the money. All the data is posted on Recovery.gov so the public can track the Recovery funds.
I suggest those who want to be informed read the link to Recovery.gov and not take Fox News and Foxfyer as the final word. Cherry picked stats and facts may fool some of the people all of the time (a shout-out to CrusaderFrank and Stepanie) but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
I'm willing to bet there isn't a single con who posts here who has ever gone to Recovery.gov. They believe it's all lies. They also won't read the extensive analysis done by Greenbeard. That would mean their beliefs that Obama & Co sit in the White House and dream up Socialist/Communist plots in order to form a new social order might not be true. They might have to admit that, in fact, they had no choice.
Half the money hasn't been spent yet, and it was an emergency to pass the bill or the whole world would collapse.
Of the $792 billion, $83 billion is left to spend on projects and $65 billion reserved for tax cuts. That's $148 billion left. Do try to stay current.
But consider, most of those projects spent funds on goods and services, and isn't that stimulating the economy?
No. It's simply redistributing money from one place to another. If we had a stimulated economy we wouldn't have unemployment in the teens.
Isn't wealth redistributed everyday in America? When a bank loans money on credit cards at 18% and pays less than 1% in interest on deposits, isn't that a redistribution of wealth? Aren't laws which protect lenders - and bail them out as did Bush in 2008 with tax payer money - a redistribution of wealth?
Why does the RW have a corner on morons?
I Don't Think the Stimulus is Working
Congratulations to WryCatcher for being the first to evoke Foxfyre's Law of W.
I found this. If it really is a trailer for a movie coming out this Fall, it should be a doozy:
YouTube - ‪I Want Your Money Trailer (HD)‬‎
If you are a small business owner Foxfyre, explain to the readers where the taxes you pay go and for what. Small business being hammered by federal taxes is a canard, the burden on small business comes in the form of fees, taxes, assessments, etc paid to local and sometimes state governemnt.
As for my pointing out GWB was the one who signed the legislation bailing out the too big to fail, I do so not in blame, but to counter the blame Obama receives from the RW purveyors of propaganda who suggest by innuendo that Obama and not Bush is responsible for the bail out. And, btw, Bush did the correct thing, though those who recieved the largess did not.
Congratulations to WryCatcher for being the first to evoke Foxfyre's Law of W.
I found this. If it really is a trailer for a movie coming out this Fall, it should be a doozy:
YouTube - ‪I Want Your Money Trailer (HD)‬‎
If you are a small business owner Foxfyre, explain to the readers where the taxes you pay go and for what. Small business being hammered by federal taxes is a canard, the burden on small business comes in the form of fees, taxes, assessments, etc paid to local and sometimes state governemnt.
As for my pointing out GWB was the one who signed the legislation bailing out the too big to fail, I do so not in blame, but to counter the blame Obama receives from the RW purveyors of propaganda who suggest by innuendo that Obama and not Bush is responsible for the bail out. And, btw, Bush did the correct thing, though those who recieved the largess did not.
Well apparently a lot of years of my taxes went to study ants somewhere in South America where no American jobs were created or to study dinosaur eggs in China where no American jobs were created.
And your post illustrates in spades that you have never been a business owner and don't know the first thing about it. No offense.
If you are a small business owner Foxfyre, explain to the readers where the taxes you pay go and for what. Small business being hammered by federal taxes is a canard, the burden on small business comes in the form of fees, taxes, assessments, etc paid to local and sometimes state governemnt.
As for my pointing out GWB was the one who signed the legislation bailing out the too big to fail, I do so not in blame, but to counter the blame Obama receives from the RW purveyors of propaganda who suggest by innuendo that Obama and not Bush is responsible for the bail out. And, btw, Bush did the correct thing, though those who recieved the largess did not.
Complete and utter poppycock. Most small business are either sole proprieterships or partnerships that are taxed at individual tax rates.
Obama allowing the Bush Tax cuts to expire will cause these small businesses to pay income taxes at higher rates than do Mega Corps. The highest Corporate tax rate is 35%. Small businesses will pay 39.6% plus an additional 3.8% ObamaCare surcharge once that kicks in.
Well apparently a lot of years of my taxes went to study ants somewhere in South America where no American jobs were created or to study dinosaur eggs in China where no American jobs were created.
And your post illustrates in spades that you have never been a business owner and don't know the first thing about it. No offense.
No offense taken. My sense that your post is not responsive doesn't surprise me. You are correct, I've never been a small business owner. But, I supervised an employee during the time he planned for and eventually opened a small restaurant and have a good idea of where the money went even before he earned any income.
As for your comment on ants and eggs, I agree many small and not so small scientific studies seem absurd. Not knowing the goal of such studies makes it easy to dismiss them with a cavalier attitude, yet, what if such studies lead to cures for disease?
Well, if you want to play the 'what if' game, what if the government didn't take so much in taxes and would guarantee businesses that the tax rates would remain stable for the next X number of years so those businesses could afford to plan and expand and grow and hire millions of currently unemployed people?
Go back to Boedicca's post on tax rates. It spells out the consequences of letting the Bush tax cuts expire plus the new taxes proposed for healthcare and what Obama wants to do with energy. The government has set so many different earnings threshholds now for the proposed tax structure that nobody with a clue believes anything they say about it any more.
In my opinion, the recession would effecively end within the next few days or weeks if. . .
The Obama administration would announce:
1. All unspent stimulus monies will be returned to the treasury to reduce the deficit and will be untouchable.
There is $148 billion left, and it's IN the Treasury. Where do you think it is? Some bank in Chicago with a big banner in front "STIMULUS BANK"??
2. The healthcare reform will be suspended until the Congress can achieve a true bipartisan agreement on what needs to be done.
Some portions may be suspended, but there will never be "bipartisan" agreement on health care reform until upper income Republicans/Conservatives start feeling the pinch of higher premiums and costs in their own pockets. It's that simple.
3. The Cap & Trade legislation is going on the back burner and it will not be ressurrected until there is bipartisan support to deal with it.
Cap and trade was removed from the energy bill last week.
4. The Bush tax policy will remain in effect for at least the next five years.
Never happen. Even Bush did not intend for it to be a forever tax cut; otherwise, it would not have had an expiration date. The second tax cut was dependent on the state of the economy. Another small detail cons always seem to omit from discussion.
And President Obama would see his approval ratings go through the roof.
Some of us aren't as stupid as you'd prefer.
The problem is not in Washington, it's us.
Fact- nobody is going out to find jobs
More people stop looking for work- Market Dispatches - MSN Money
Fact- Small businesses are too scared to create jobs
Fact- States like mine, Tennessee, aren't spending the stimulus money the way they were suppose to.
Study: Tennessee lags in stimulus spending - Nashville Business Journal
I hate to say this, but it appears that America, as a whole, decided to either go on a vacation or go on strike. This is not President Obama's fault, it's ours.
We don't have the balls to roll the dice. Food for thought.
In my business I deal with mostly small businesses including a lot of contractors.
First a short term project like installing windows in a closed building provides work for at most a few days. The administration can claim 'jobs created' for those few days but you soon have everybody back on the unemployment roles. There is no way anybody will convince me that such government spending stimulates anything more than the deficit and national debt. And they are being counted as 'jobs created' and they shouldn't be.
Is it better than paying unemployment for those few days? Not if the taxpayer doesn't get full value for the dollars spent.
So according to your own link here:
Study: Tennessee lags in stimulus spending - Nashville Business Journal
the red tape, required environmental studies etc., per usual mean that government contracts will see many delays and many didn't happen last year or this year and will finally be implemented in subsequent years and the blame for that is squarely on the shoulders of the Federal government.
So back to those small businesses, they're telling me they aren't going to get ambitious about much of anything until they know what the tax consequences will be next year and beyond or what the healthcare mandates will do to them, etc. etc. etc. The government keeps moving the markers from week to week and that isn't anybody but the government's fault either.
You don't roll the dice if you don't know what the payoff is going to be. And you sure don't roll the dice if it means you have to pay even more than what you are prepared to gamble.
I thought you were a welfare worker.
On Feb. 13, 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 at the urging of President Obama, who signed it into law four days later. A direct response to the economic crisis, the Recovery Act has three immediate goals:
Create new jobs and save existing ones
Spur economic activity and invest in long-term growth
Foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending
The Recovery Act intends to achieve those goals by:
Providing $288 billion in tax cuts and benefits for millions of working families and businesses
Increasing federal funds for education and health care as well as entitlement programs (such as extending unemployment benefits) by $224 billion
Making $275 billion available for federal contracts, grants and loans
Requiring recipients of Recovery funds to report quarterly on how they are using the money. All the data is posted on Recovery.gov so the public can track the Recovery funds.
I suggest those who want to be informed read the link to Recovery.gov and not take Fox News and Foxfyer as the final word. Cherry picked stats and facts may fool some of the people all of the time (a shout-out to CrusaderFrank and Stepanie) but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
Were you employed and selling stuff in the mid 90's? That's what a recovery feels like.
This is no recovery. This is a recession. It's not getting better. It's getting worse. The guy in charge has gotten everything he has sought to lead us to recovery and he is failing.
If there is a recovery, you don't need statistics to tell you it's happening. You will see it in privately funded construction projects, cities and states flush with tax revenues, growing and reinvigorated neighborhoods and politicians crowing about their success in creating jobs that they had nothing to do with.
If there is a failed recovery you will see it in the loss of jobs, houses and storefronts empty, cities and states laying off employees and shutting down programs and politicians feeling our pain and extending unemployment benefits.
By your own observations, is this a recovery or a failed recovery?
Half the money hasn't been spent yet, and it was an emergency to pass the bill or the whole world would collapse.
Of the $792 billion, $83 billion is left to spend on projects and $65 billion reserved for tax cuts. That's $148 billion left. Do try to stay current.
