Stimulus Package Predicament

We oppose it [Obama's stimulus plan] because most of the bill is payoff money to Democratic constituencies: hundreds of millions for Planned Parenthood, more AIDS education, money for ACORN, countless studies, etc. ["10 Reasons to Whack Obama's Stimulus Plan," usnews.com]. Very little actually goes to the economy. The absolute best stimulus would be to eliminate the corporate income tax. The second best would be to give all Americans a tax holiday equal to the dollar amount of the "stimulus" pork bill.

Comment by Eric of AR

If you do away with all the taxes, you would still come up short in equaling the loss of 13 trillion dollars. What makes sense (which Republicans don't have) is to make investments. As they say, "Jesus saves, but Moses invests."

Comment by Arthur Gittleman of AR

The ill-advised authorization of hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of spending, which has not survived congressional vetting (a low bar to begin with), not only guarantees massive waste but also the squandering of scarce resources on less efficient or even counterproductive plans. Private-sector job creation is driven by capital and demand. No amount of feel-good spending can match the efficient allocation people choose for their own money. Eliminate corporate taxes, capital gains taxes, and taxes on interest and dividends, and the capital will flow, but toward its most productive uses, not the local projects [John] Murtha and [Barney] Frank hope to fund.

Comment by Jim Addison of SC

The problem with picking a bunch of research papers that seemingly agree with your ideological opinion is that you fail to acknowledge the context of their conclusions. We have a highly unusual circumstance that even some reputable economists such as [Gary] Becker and [John] Taylor seem oblivious to: a deflationary liquidity crisis. Very few of these research results are applicable in such context. This is not 2003 nor 1997, and it certainly is not 1981. The bottom line is that [Christina] Romer coauthored the paper that described the expected effects of the Obama stimulus and [Olivier] Blanchard has coauthored an IMF paper that argues in favor of a concerted global fiscal stimulus. Why not ask them why they are now in favor of a fiscal stimulus instead of cherry picking their research articles out of context?

Comment by Mark A. Sadowski of DE

Spending more to cure a fiscal crisis is like drinking more to cure alcoholism—both will eventually lead to systemic failure.

Comment by Frank Byrne of WI

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