Economic Stimulus Proposals Divide Democrats

Economic Stimulus Proposals Divide Democrats
By Alan K. Ota, CQ Staff


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid face a split in their party’s ranks over the best medicine for a tired economy: tax cuts or more spending.

Liberal Democrats, committee chairmen and appropriators want to boost spending on traditional Democratic priorities such as infrastructure and heating oil subsidies. Moderate Democrats would prefer to spur consumer spending and job creation with new tax breaks for middle-class families and businesses.

Pelosi and Reid want to offer an economic package to compete with the tax cuts expected to be the centerpiece of President Bush’s fiscal 2009 budget proposal. Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin , D-Ill., said party leaders in both chambers will soon sift proposals by committee chairmen.

Democratic aides said they will look for measures that would avert bad economic news close to the November elections or inoculate Democrats against political fallout.

Although they are miles away from Bush on economic policy, Pelosi and Reid are publicly calling for a bipartisan approach. In a Jan. 11 letter to the president, they proposed a summit meeting before either the White House or congressional Democrats unveil their proposals.

One senior Democratic aide said a bipartisan approach would be preferable because “it’s not a stimulus if it’s not enacted.”

Aides said that if the White House declines to meet, Democratic leaders will likely outline a stimulus plan before Bush’s Jan. 28 State of the Union address.

more...

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000002654515

Still means more goes out than comes in.

Am I in Looking Glass Land?

The country is headed for a very bad recession brought on the the borrow & spend policies of the administration.

The country is up to it's ears in debt and only kept afloat by the countries that it owes to.

The "stimulus package" is like borrowing on one credit card to pay the interest on another.

When folks at the bottom - the homeless, the working poor (zero income tax bracket!), and the least advantaged - have funds to bootstrap themselves to a better life the businesses willing and able to provide the "win-win" services at a fair price will do so. That results in employment at the direct service level and on upward.

The WW2 GI Bill was, by far, the most cost-effective federal spending in history. Not only did it enable millions to qualify for better incomes (paying higher taxes), it more than DOUBLED the size of the post-secondary education system and DOUBLED the number of families living in their own homes - which had the secondary effect of an enormous expansion of durable goods production. The impact was virtually unmeasurable, contributing significantly to the creation/expansion of the middle class and making the U.S. into an economic powerhouse for the next fifty years.

Trickle up. Without a doubt.

Federal Income Tax rebates pump the money in ABOVE about 50% of wage earners (not to mention the long-term unemployed) - people who earn too little to pay much, if any, Federal Income Tax in the first place.

The DLC Dems are at it again ... kissing the asses of their corporate masters and saying "fuck you" to the working poor. All in the name of "compromise" of course. :puke: