After listening to the State of the Union last night, it’s no wonder to me Republicans are frustrated with our Party's leader. Sure, President Bush has done some things we can be proud of. The tax cuts come to mind--although wouldn’t it have been nice for him to have cut spending by the same amount. I know, I know, that’s crazy talk. The fact that we haven’t had a terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11 is another achievement. But two things he spoke about last night really rubbed me the wrong way.
This whole idea of a “stimulus” package just runs me crazy. What sense does it make for the Federal Government to borrow $150 billion in order to give a few hundred bucks back to the citizens? Wasn’t this entire credit crisis created by folks who were irresponsible with debt in the first place? So to fix it, the Federal Government is going to continue the irresponsibility. If you really think that John Doe receiving $600 is going to make or break this economy, fine, but why don’t they cut $150 billion in spending and then refund the difference to the taxpayers? You and I both know they won’t do that because the Congress and our President have the best of both worlds. They can cut taxes and increase spending. That way everyone is happy. At least until the debt service becomes crippling.
All this stimulus talk is short sighted. What the President and Congress should be talking about is making the tax cuts permanent and reining in the deficit. Those are the two best things they can do right now to ensure solid footing for our economy in the years to come.
Bush also talked about No Child Left Behind. This is one program that needs to be left to die and never mentioned again. The Federal Government has no business running our education system. The States, with Virginia as a leader, were doing a fine job. Virginia had a great SOL system in place. No Child Left Behind has been a nightmare for the States and for the local schools. Many schools are now declining the federal money so they don’t have deal with the strings. They are finding that flexibility and freedom are worth more to them than the money.
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2 comments:
This is your best post yet, I couldn't agree more. Keep up the great work I really enjoy reading your work.
Well said. Another point about the rebate plan: US has one of the lowest savings rate globally. It's negative, in fact. That is, we spend more than we make. CBS story on Negative Savings
So if the government just gave us a little more money, we could spend that, plus some more...and dig further into debt. Yet, I don't think any president or elected leader could tell citizens this. Business lobysists need the US to be greedy consumers. Another stat is that the US has only 5% of the population, but consumes over 50% of global production. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad if we weren't going into debt doing it, but those two facts give the mideast a fundamental basis for despising us.
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