You've heard about this new stimulus plan Obama just signed right? $13 added to your weekley paycheck?
Ya know, I find this kinda funny, cuz if I remember correctly, back when there was that $600 stimulus check rolling down the road... Well $1,200 for a married couple. What was that, last May or June? Mrs. Obama totally sneered at it! “You’re getting $600. What can you do with that? Not to be ungrateful or anything. But maybe it pays down a bill, but it doesn’t pay down every bill every month... Barack’s approach is that the short-term quick fix kinda stuff sounds good. And it may even feel good that first month when you get that check. And then you go out and you buy a pair of earrings.”
HaHaHa, earrings?!? I’m not sure I understand how $13.00 a week, reduced to $8.00 a week in January, will do much for “paying down every bill every month.” What am I supposed to do with $54 per month (which turns into $32), especially when it's offset by the increased taxes that will come from ending the Bush Tax Cuts (which stimulated us out of a recession and brought 7 years of unimpeded growth before this time) suspect strangeness occurred and the additional tax increases that will accompany our ramped-up spending, plus the million little laws, fees and fines that will eat into our incomes…help me out, I’m not really seeing the stimulus, here.
Take a look at this list from Courier Journal to see what's REALLY going on with this stimilus bill:
Aid to poor and unemployed
$40 billion to provide extended federal unemployment benefits through Dec. 31, and increase them by $25 a week; $20 billion to increase food-stamp benefits by 14 percent; $4 billion for job training; $3 billion in temporary welfare payments.
Direct cash payments
$14.2 billion to give one-time $250 payments to Social Security recipients, poor people on Supplemental Security Income, and veterans receiving disability and pensions.
Infrastructure
$48 billion for transportation projects, including $27.5 billion for highway and bridge construction and repair; $8.4 billion for mass transit; $8 billion for construction of high-speed railways and $1.3 billion for Amtrak; $4.6 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers; $4 billion for public housing improvements; $6 billion for clean- and drinking-water projects; $7.2 billion to bring broadband Internet service to underserved areas; $4.2 billion to repair and modernize Defense Department facilities.
Health care
$24.7 billion to provide a 65 percent subsidy of health-care-insurance premiums for the unemployed under the COBRA program; $86.6 billion to help states with Medicaid; $19 billion to modernize health-information-technology systems; $10 billion for health research and construction of National Institutes of Health facilities; $1 billion for prevention and wellness programs.
State block grants
$8.8 billion in aid to states to defray budget cuts.
Energy
About $50 billion for energy programs, focused chiefly on efficiency and renewable energy, including $5 billion to weatherize modest-income homes; $6.4 billion to clean up nuclear weapons production sites; $11 billion toward a so-called "smart electricity grid" to reduce waste; $6 billion to subsidize loans for renewable energy projects; $6.3 billion in state energy-efficiency and clean-energy grants; and $4.5 billion to make federal buildings more energy efficient.
Education
$44.5 billion in aid to local school districts to prevent layoffs and cutbacks, with flexibility to use the funds for school modernization and repair; $25.2 billion to school districts to fund special education and the No Child Left Behind law for K-12 students; $15.6 billion to boost the maximum Pell Grant by $500, to $5,350; $2 billion for Head Start.
Housing
$4 billion to repair and make public housing projects more energy efficient; $2 billion for redevelopment of abandoned foreclosed homes; $1.5 billion for homeless shelters; $2 billion to pay off a looming shortfall in public-housing accounts.
Science
$3 billion for the National Science Foundation for basic science and engineering research; $1 billion for NASA; $1.6 billion for research in areas such as climate science, biofuels, high-energy physics and nuclear physics.
Homeland security
$2.8 billion for homeland-security programs, including $1 billion for airport-screening equipment.
Law enforcement
$4 billion in grants to state and local law enforcement to hire officers and purchase equipment.
TAXES
New tax credit
About $116 billion for tax credits of $400 per worker or $800 per couple in 2009 and 2010. Starting around June, workers could expect to see about $13 more in their paychecks each week. Millions of Americans who don't make enough money to pay federal income taxes could file returns next year and receive checks. Individuals making more than $75,000 and couples making more than $150,000 would receive reduced amounts.
Alternative minimum tax
About $70 billion to spare about 24 million taxpayers from being hit with the alternative minimum tax in 2009. The change would save a family of four an average of $2,300. The tax was designed so wealthy taxpayers can't use credits and deductions to avoid paying any taxes. But it was never indexed to inflation, so families making as little as $45,000 would see significant tax increases without the change.
Expanded college credit
About $14 billion to provide a $2,500 expanded tax credit for college tuition and related expenses for 2009 and 2010. The credit is phased out for couples making more than $160,000.
Child tax credit
About $15 billion to provide the $1,000 child tax credit to more families who don't make enough money to pay income taxes.
Earned income tax credit
$4.7 billion to expand the earned income tax credit for low-income families with three or more children.
Home-buyer credit
$6.6 billion to repeal a requirement that an $8,000 first-time home-buyer tax credit be paid back over time for homes purchased from Jan. 1 to Nov. 30, unless the home is sold within three years.
Auto sales
$1.7 billion to makes sales taxes paid on new cars, light trucks, recreational vehicles and motorcycles tax-deductible through the end of the year.
Renewable energy incentives
About $20 billion in tax incentives for renewable energy and energy efficiency over 10 years, including extending tax credits for energy produced from wind, geothermal, hydropower and landfill gas; grants to build renewable energy facilities; tax credits for purchases of energy-efficient furnaces, windows and doors or insulation; tax credits for families who purchase plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Bonus depreciation
$5 billion to extend a provision allowing businesses buying equipment such as computers to speed up its depreciation through 2009.
Repeal bank credit
Repeal a Treasury provision that allowed firms that buy money-losing banks to use more of the losses as tax credits to offset the profits of the merged banks for tax purposes. The change would raise taxes on the merged banks by $7 billion over 10 years.
Debt-limit increase
Increases the statutory limit on the national debt by $789 billion, to $12.1 trillion.
I find it VERY interesting to find out that out of the $816 billion in "new spending and tax cuts", $264 billion (32%) has been alloted for welfare spending, which equates to about $6,700 in new welfare spending for every poor person in the U.S. But this is only the tip of the iceberg! This bill sets aside another $523 billion in new welfare spending that is hidden by budgetary gimmicks!
The claim that Congress is temporarily increasing welfare spending to spark the economy by boosting consumer spending is nothing more then a Red Herring attempting to divert attention from the original issue, with the real goal being Obama's massive expansion of the welfare state.
