The Bankrupt the Nation Act of 2009, often erroneously called the “Stimulus” bill, fittingly passed on Friday the 13th.
In the House the vote was 246-183, and in the Senate 60-38. No Republicans voted for it in the House and in the Senate 3 RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) joined every last Democrat in voting for it. Here are some of the more, shall we say, interesting portions of the bill.
Although I think this is the worst spending bill ever to pass Congress, and though I am confident the results for our economic well-being will be disastrous, as the chart above indicates which details the budget deficit as a percent of gdp from 1965-2009 (The figure for 2009 is based on a Congressional Budget Office projection of a deficit of 1.2 trillion dollars. I think this is too low and the actual budget deficit will be between 1.6 and 2 trillion dollars.), yet I am glad it passed. The majority of voters in the last two election cycles made a conscious decision to hand unchecked power to the Democrats. So be it. They have the power and they have used it.
After the debacle of the Great Bailout Swindle of 2008, the Democrats, with great majorities in Congress and the Presidency, had the freedom to choose any economic and fiscal path they wished. This is the path they have chosen: give mountains of pork to the various special interests that support the Democrat party, assume an incredible amount of public debt, and smother the economic crisis by burying it in greenbacks. The Democrat party now deserves all the credit or the blame for the impact of this bill on our economy. The economy is their baby now.
Update I : A great cartoon from Chris Muir on the current situation is here. Hattip to Ed Morrissey at Hot Air.
Update II. Surprise! The White House is attempting to dampen expectations in regard to the Bankrupt the Nation Act of 2009. Hattips to Instapundit and Roger’s Rules.
Why “Democrat” economy? As Arlen Spector said, the Republicans essentially support this bill, but are afraid to put their fingerprints on it.
Arlen Spector, besides being a RINO, is a liar. This monstrosity is the Democrats’ gift to the nation. Besides Spector, and the Maine RINOS, the Republican party was unified in its opposition.
While one ought to roll eyes at superstition, I’d say that the Friday 13 passing of this trillion-dollar bag of pork-rinds is a bit of a morbidly funny harbinger. I am also glad it passed (first, because it was inevitable and second, because its inevitable doom may seal the ultimate downfall of the Left, even as the Left enjoys its shining little “moment,” at least right now).
More horrific is the complete lack of innovation that surrounded this grand Democratic scheme to solve (or at least blunt) the crisis. Obama the new, new Visionary (for that is indeed the specific image he cultivated, sold, and rode-upon into office). Some “vision.” This bill is not only the most pedestrian, predictable, and typically uninspired Leftist folly right out of the tattered playbook, it is the fattest.
This kind of “same old, same old” is far more ridiculous than the “past eight years same-old” that Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the other dwarfs have been whimpering about. Is anyone amazed at how the leftist imagination is so easily titillated and indoctrinated, en masse, by the most generic clouds of stardust? No. People may rightfully decry Bush and his myriad difficulties, but with the passing of this bill, the Obama Cult has officially become the greatest hoodwink in American history.
None of that matters, now. We’re in for it. Obama plans to address the housing crisis on Wednesday. More drab policy-wonking and ineptitude. The horror is that so few Americans have even a shred of a clue that there is no solution to this largest segment of the crisis. Nothing can be done, short of having allowed (and continuing to allow) the big banks to utterly collapse and find a way to prop-up the smaller banks that did not have the means to engage in the pervasive lending abuses of the giants, and thus make it easier for the crashed banking infrastructure to reset itself even a tiny bit.
That, at least, would put ~some~ sort of a dent in the fact that over 70 percent of those in the market for a house can never qualify for a loan now (even if 20 percent of that 70 actually DO qualify), with housing prices not even at the nadir, yet, and inventory all the way to the moon. Letting the offending banks and lenders fail and giving incentives to the smaller, up-and-coming banks would have helped put that 10-20% of qualified buyers back on the map. Even getting 5% of those who still truly qualify (but who cannot get a loan to save their lives) back on the map would have had a salvific impact. A superb pilot-light in the darkness. That would have been a real stimulus, right there. A genuine stimulus.
But no one gets this. Few, at least. America doesn’t get it. I’ve been in lending and real estate for almost 20 years, in California. I can attest that Americans haven’t a proverbial clue and our representatives (touchy Republicans and dingbat Democrats alike) are evading the primary issue, on top of the Democrats’ execrable compounding of the issue. Everyone knows this stimulus is going to fail and that even its pithy scraps of assistance won’t register a blip for years. To secure their paradigm, Obama and the Democrats betrayed the nation and cobbled together this piece of garbage as quickly as possible (under the “we need it as swiftly as possible” mantle) at the expense of bipartisanship and the future. Certainly, a six-month attempt at coming-up with something truly innovative and potentially successful would have been wise. But that’s not on anyone’s agenda, in the beltway.
How this administration can dare uphold even a mere pretense of being innovative and visionary is, at best, a joke, now. With the passing of this cobbled-together, typically uninspired-yet-exorbitant stimulus, the Obama presidency has already become an apocalyptic disaster. A massive failure. Truly: everything to come from him over the next four years is going to be so much fiddling amid the conflagration.
I’m not sure if the stimulus will help that much in the current economic environment. Economies go through cycles and recession is part of the cycle. I read a good article on the history of cycles at, I think,
http://www.recessioninfocenter.com
I was looking at a chart of the DJIA for the last four years, it’s interesting to note that it was on a steady rise until November 2006… since then it has been declining.
What happened in Nov 2006 that could possibly account for this?
What happened in Nov 2006 that could possibly account for this?
Hmmmm,…., I seem to recall that there was an election that month,….,
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