The "stimulus" package resembles an omnibus spending bill, with many of the Pelosi gang's pet spending projects. They're trying to entice republicans to vote for it by including some tax cuts. Just to make it a smoke screen for what's really going on. If Pelosi wants to fund birth control, she should bring it up on its own. The stimulus package should be aimed 100% at as immediate as it can be to help the economy recover.
So, if the above is right (and this is just something I found on a website, so use at your own risk), the 'hundreds of millions' in the stimulus bill for family planning is actually just an authorization to the states to do as they wish on the subject. States rights. Cutting bureaucracy. No wonder the right-wingers here are up in arms. barfo
I'd agree with that. On the other hand, sticking things that don't belong into unrelated legislation is the American Way. barfo
I personally don't care what they pass, except when they're going to borrow $1.2T and give us a structural massive deficit in the process.
Update. Apparently Obama is willing to step up against his own party when it gets right down to it. Not anything new, Clinton and Carter both had Democrats controlling both houses and they all bickered amongst themselves. Anyhow: http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/01/contraceptive-m.html Contraceptive Measure Dropped from Stimulus ABC News' Teddy Davis Reports: House Democrats have agreed to drop family planning funds for the low-income from an $825 billion economic stimulus bill. The contraceptive provision was dropped after President Barack Obama placed a call to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., on Monday. Waxman is the chairman of the committee that inserted the contraception provision into the stimulus package last week. Obama asked him to remove the measure from the bill, according to a Democratic congressional aide familiar with the call, and the decision was made by House Democrats on Tuesday to do so. Under the scuttled contraceptive provision, states would have been able to offer family planning services -- including contraceptives -- under Medicaid, the government health program for the poor, without having to obtain federal permission. Now that the provision has been dropped, states will need to seek a federal waiver before being allowed to use Medicaid to provide family planning services and supplies to low income women. Controversy over the contraception provision was sparked over the weekend when George Stephanopoulos asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about it on ABC's "This Week." "Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?" asked Stephanopoulos. "Well, the family planning services reduce cost," said Pelosi. "They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those -- one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government." "So no apologies for that?" asked Stephanopoulos. "No apologies," said Pelosi. "No. We have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy. . . ." <script src="http://abcnews.go.com/javascript/portableplayer?id=6744202&autoStart=false"></script><iframe bordercolor="#FFFFFF" vspace="0" hspace="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://a.abcnews.com/video/portableplayer?affil=null&cid=null&id=6744202&autoStart=false&adPattern=null&size=null" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" height="297" width="332"></iframe> Read the full transcript here. UPDATE: During Tuesday's briefing with reporters, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that President Barack Obama approves of the contraceptive measure but conveyed to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., by phone on Monday that the stimulus package was not the right place for it. "The president called Chairman Waxman yesterday and said that while he believed that the policy of increased funding for family planning was the right one, that he didn't believe this bill was the vehicle to make that happen," said Gibbs. ABC News' David Chalian contributed to this report.
Next to kill from the bill (all of these things): http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090128/D95VRB1O0.html [FONT=Verdana,Sans-serif]The measure includes more than $120 billion in aid to schools, some of it to protect them from the effects of state budget cuts in a time of recession. It also provides more than $80 billion additional funding for Medicaid, the state-federal program that provides health care for low-income people, and $40 billion more to help people who have recently lost their jobs hold onto employer-provided health care. Another $32 billion is ticketed for transportation projects, and $30 billion more for water projects and rail and mass transit.[/FONT]
^^^ Note: if they want to pass a separate relief type bill and a separate infrastructure spending bill, I would like to see it done that way. The economic stimulus bill is massive deficit spending, it should be 100% things to immediately help the economy. Like put a floor under housing prices, pay companies 2x a year's salary to hire a person, and that kind of thing.
How does that work? I haven't heard that idea before. Why 2x, and what keeps the company from firing the employee once the federal money runs out? And why is this a better stimulus than hiring people to build roads, which you think shouldn't be in the stimulus package? barfo
Salary is only part of the actual cost of having an employee. For white collar jobs, you have to pay for office space, phone bills, electricity, supplies, and other things to support the employee. For blue collar jobs, you might have to pay for a fleet of trucks, tools, gas, insurance, etc. Plus benefits, like insurance. Previous stimulus packages have given people from $300 to $1000 in direct payments. This doesn't compare to giving someone in the household a job with a steady paycheck, even for a year. Though for that year, you'd expect the landlord (office space), phone company (phone bills), electric company, suppliers, auto makers (truck fleet), etc., to see more demand for their products and services. People with paychecks buy things, which would also help the entire economy. Building roads is a short term project. When the job's done, what do you do with the people hired? It's also a really expensive way to provide jobs. Something like $200K per employee, of which the employee might see $50K. So 4x salary vs. the 2x I suggest. $800B is the low end of the stimulus package size proposed. At 2x salary, it would add 8m $50K jobs or 4m $100K jobs to the economy. Without a whole lot of bureaucracy. Immediate effect.
Because the prior stimulus packages gave the money to "everyone". Your plan gives it to a small subset. We are years behind on basic transportation maintenance projects. There's plenty of work there if the money was there to pay for it. And we'd all benefit from the results. Whereas in your plan the employer gets the direct benefit; society only gets the indirect benefits. Finally, what makes you think the employers will keep the federally funded employees on after the funding stops? I don't see how you are going to do that, without just writing companies a blank check. How do you tell if they used the money to hire someone? How do you tell if they didn't hire someone and turn around and fire someone else? barfo
Unemployment is at 7.5% nationally, higher in many places. The workforce is about 120M people. 4M jobs is enough to cut unemployment by a LOT. If people have jobs, they'll spend, and what they spend on creates demand for products from those industries. Thus people with jobs in those industries will need to be kept around. You can tell if people are hired by the W-2 forms.
Sure. Not arguing that 4M new jobs wouldn't be welcome. Yes. But you can say that about creating jobs in the public sector as well (filling potholes or whatever). How, exactly? Let's say I have a company of 100 people. The government gives me money to hire one more. So I hire Joe Bob. But then Peggy Sue gets married and moves to Alaska, so she drops off my payroll. Do I have to pay back the government? Do I have to replace Peggy Sue? Let's say I have a company of 100,000 people. I lay off 1000 people today. Tomorrow, will the government pay me to hire them all back? Let's say I am hiring in Oregon, and laying people off at a factory in Nevada. Will the government subsidize the hires in Oregon? How are you going to monitor this without a bureaucracy? Let's say I'm in the business of consulting on how to get employee subsidies from the government. Business is booming, cash is rolling in the door, and I'm hiring everyone I can. And the great thing is, the taxpayers are paying all my costs, despite my business being extremely lucrative without the subsidies. barfo
None of the so-called stimulus bill will have any effect before the end of 2010. How about something that will be immediate help! Otherwise my characterization of it is right on - omnibus spending bill that we're borrowing $1T for. If they want to fill potholes, I'm good with it, but it really should be it's own bill for that purpose and funded by taxpayer dollars. Even if your business is doing good, a hire is a hire, a job is a job. It gives the workers disposable income and cash flow to put back into the economy. The problem right now is that people don't feel secure in their jobs so they spend less, which creates less demand for goods & services, which actually does cause people to lose their jobs. That's a downward spiral, a negative feedback loop, and it has to be reversed or else.
