The Senate voted on Tuesday to approve an $838 billion economic stimulus plan that stands to become the most expansive anti-recession effort by the United States government since World War II.
Congressional leaders said they would immediately begin to work out the differences between the Senate measure and an $820 billion version passed by the House, with President Obama also likely to have a strong voice in the talks.
The timetable for the House-Senate negotiations remained indefinite, however. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, said he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “think we can get a lot of work done in the first 24 hours.”
Ironically, a Democrat from Idaho put forth a competing bill that was a fraction of the Reid/Pelosi/Obama monstrosity and would likely do far less harm while even doing some good. [url=http://www.dcexaminer.com/opinion/Blue-Dog-nips-Obama-with-a-better-stimulus-idea-39358182.html]LINK[/url]
Of course, Minnick’s bill didn’t gut welfare reform, put the Central State even more in charge of healthcare, lard up vote fraudsters like ACORN, bail out spendthrift cretins in the states, etc, so it didn’t have a prayer. In other words, it was a real stimulus bill, not one designed to [url=http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/02/smoking-gun-caller-explains-stimulus-as.html]turn the US into a greasy Chicago patronage cesspit[/url].
And it gets worse, because Chicago machine politics are just the slicker, modern version of the Big Man economic models of the Third World. Low status betas get to slave away as net tax producers to support the alpha Big Man and his retinue. The attraction of this model for single women is absolutely primal. They voted for Obama at over 70%. This will of course distort the private sector unbelievably, as business models will be structured to satisfy government dictates rather than consumer preference. Promotions will be based on the ability to position the business to receive political patronage rather than actually compete head-to-head in the market. Working class men will get hit the hardest. Lacking the glibness and retaining the sense of stubborn self-reliance that keeps them from grovelling for membership in a patronage network, they will be in effective domestic exile. In short, the US is devolving into a banana republic.
The stock market went down today.
a vote that shall live in infamy to borrow from FDR…..
There’s still time to kill this monster. The Senate should filibuster the final bill. We have liberal Republican Senators making trouble. Are there no conservative Democratic Senators?
I applaud the Blue Dog Democratic plan in the House. This is what a true Democratic stimulus plan should look like, and if the President indeed wants bipartisanship, this is the sort of thing he should support.
Instead, the Spendulous plan, if it passes, will cripple the American economy for a decade and contains a massive restructuring of public policy which is being pushed through under cover of “emergency.” It’s dangerous, and it’s dishonest.
Hi Katherine, here I am again again agreeing with you. In addtion I will a comment like I usually do.
As the years of the Great Depression of the late 20’s and the entire time of the 30’s went racing on, about the only thing that pulled us out then was when we were dragged into WWII thus leading to a great surge in industrial output. Let us all fervently pray that we don’t get dragged into a WWIII. Civilization as we know it now could be radically changed – DOWNWARD!!!
A contrarian view: the GD lingered thru WWII, and effectively ended once a large cohort of men with military training returned to work in the private sector and the Old Right remnant junked most of FDR’s schemes.
So it was the military training that changed things, Byzantine? And what did that? Massive government spending on a war. Your conservative argument doesn’t work, no matter how you slice it.
Alta Californian,
It wasn’t the military training so much as it was the return of men to the private sector. The military training was a bonus sure, but you need to look at the debit side of that ledger as well …
Liberals sure are a snippy bunch.
[i] About the only thing that pulled us out [of the Great Depression] was when we were dragged into WWII thus leading to a great surge in industrial output [/i] —#6
[i] The GD lingered thru WWII [/i] —#7
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The United States had in many respects recovered from the Great Depression by the late 1930s—before World War II began. Consider the facts:
— GNP fell 33% between 1929 and 1933. But by 1937 it had exceeded its 1929 level. That qualifies as a recovery.
— Unemployment rose from 3.1% in 1929 to 16.1% in 1931 and then to a staggering 25.2% in 1933. It fell steadily from then until 1937, when it reached 13.8%.
— From 1933 to 1940, GNP rose 65% in constant dollars, industrial production rose 82%, exports rose 140%, and unemployment fell 45% (to 13.9%). GNP exceeded its 1929 level by 15%.
Reply to #10.
Interesting statistics.
How much of this can be attributed to natural non-governmental market forces and how much can be attributed to some sort of action taken by the federal government?
Not to mention industry gear-up for the “Lend-lease Act”, where we supplied GB and the allies for the War in Europe without actually fighting it ourselves.