Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:37:33 +0000 – By Andrea TantarosRepublican Political Commentator/FOXNews.com Contributor
President-elect Barack Obama is prepping to jam another massive stimulus plan down our throats. Lately the president-elect has been hitting the media circuit to sell this monstrosity and each time he launches into his pitch he proves that what he lacks in actual specifics he makes up for in vocabulary. But is this bloated bill just a ruse for another big, federally funded bailout for struggling states?
[caption id="attachment_5284" align="aligncenter" width="247" caption="President-elect Barack Obama is interviewed by George Stephanopoulos during the taping of "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" on Sat., Jan. 10 (AP photo/Lauren Victoria Burke, ABC NEWS) "][/caption]
According to Obama, his road and sewer stimulus package would pump billions into things like "infrastructure" and "green jobs." Wait a minute, nobody is saying that the failure to spend over $700 billion on roads and sewers created this mess, and no one saying that new sewers will get us out of it. Obama has insisted that we must invest in what works. How do we know green jobs will work and provide a return? We don't. And it's quite a pricey experiment to find out.
What's most troubling is the notion that more taxpayer money is heading right for states that are in the red. Just a few weeks ago, governors and mayors made their way to Washington, DC to hound Obama for a handout. Now mayors across America have submitted over 11,000 proposals for some bailout cash including one to fund a mob museum in Vegas. Talk about a real gamble in Sin City. Is Tony "The Ant" Spilotro really our best bet?
Take New York for example, a state that's in financial ruin. The Empire State is facing a $15 billion budget deficit. Why would we encourage a state that spent itself into disaster to spend more? There are workers already repairing sewers and roads around the Big Apple and America. Will Obama give money that will be spent on existing jobs or hire thousands of new sewer workers?
According to Obama, "only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy...where an inability to lend and borrow stops growth and leads to even less credit." What our future president doesn't understand is that the vicious cycles were caused by the government through the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the refusal to regulate, in part because there was a belief that a regulation would prevent the prosperity associated with owning a home. How do we expect government to be part of the solution? According to CNBC we have allocated 7 trillion to fix our economic crisis and there is $300 billion currently left in TARP. Is that not enough?
Obama is refusing to ask the same question that homeowners didn't answer when the mortgage mess was going on: Can we afford to borrow this money? At some point we are mortgaging our national security by letting developing countries buy our debt. The more we spend the less we have to spend on our national defense. What if China develops a distaste for buying our debt? Maybe refusing to borrow more money might be the best thing for us. Sort of like the way parents cut off a frivolous child's allowance.
On the campaign trail Obama campaigned for balanced budgets. This might be his first broken promise. While we wait to hear answers about what this massive deficit spending will do to our currency, to inflation and to our national security even Obama admits that his recovery plan alone will not solve all the problems that led us into this crisis. (So why are we doing it??) I'll tell you what, for a trillion dollars, it better.
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