That's right - after the first stimulus proved to be a complete failure, the president now wants to throw away another $50 billion of the taxpayers' money.
Why do we need another stimulus bill? The first one didn't work, why should we assume that a second stimulus will succeed where the first failed?
President Obama pledged to the American people that his first stimulus, which totaled over $700 billion, would keep the unemployment rate below 8 percent. Not long after the bill was passed, unemployment shot up to ten percent, and is now hovering around 9.7 percent - a drop of 0.2 percent primarily due to temporary hiring and manipulation by the US Census Bureau.
The President and Congressional Democrats told us the first stimulus was a pork-free bill, but that's only because the entire bill consisted of nothing but each Congressman's pet projects - a rather transparent tactic for a Congress that pledged to end pork spending.The real question behind this is, if $700 billion wasn't enough to stimulate the economy, how is another $50 billion going to help? All the government can do with these stimulus bills is to artificially stimulate the economy - not only are they making people dependent on the government through increased government hiring, welfare programs and socialized health care, but now they're trying to make the entire economy dependent on government intervention. It didn't work during the Great Depression, and if FDR couldn't pull it off, why should we trust Barack Obama?
By passing repeated stimulus bills, the president hopes to do two things: the first, of course, has to do with pure politics. The November elections are approaching fast, and the scene looks bleak for liberal Democrats. If President Obama starts pushing for another stimulus now, then there's a chance he'll be able to maneuver the process so that the money starts flowing before the election - and there are enough people out there who are interested in hand-outs that it could make a difference in November. Of course, with more and more Americans increasingly aware of the wasteful spending going on in Washington, it could easily come back to bite the Democrats in a big way.
The other goal of repeated stimulus bills is to further prop up the US economy, and this goal could also come back to bite the Democrats.
Picture the US economy as a house with a crumbling foundation. These stimulus bills are like balloons used to prop up the house as the crumbling foundation fails. There are a few problems with this scheme, however: first off, the US government, was the one who took a jackhammer to the foundation in the first place, by over-regulating businesses even to the point of forcing banks to give home loans to people who couldn't afford the payments. Second, the US government is blowing up the balloons with a limited air supply. Our national debt is already so high that we can barely afford the interest payments, and as time goes on, we get closer and closer to having our national credit rating downgraded. Eventually, the stimulus "balloons" will pop, and our economy will be worse off than it was before.
We cannot afford another stimulus, and we do not need another stimulus. The US economy may not rebound suddenly; it takes time for an economy to recover fully, but it seems that the Democrats are looking for a quick fix, and in doing so, they are trying to put a band-aid on a shotgun blast. It's not going to fix anything over the long run, and our nation will be worse off for their ignorance.
Reading suggestions for the President and Congress:
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