Many of the opponents of President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan are not arguing in good faith, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman contends. He noted how they have used faulty math to exaggerate the cost of the jobs expected to be created by the stimulus. He also contends that “it’s clear that when it comes to economic stimulus, public spending provides much more bang for the buck than tax cuts – and therefore costs less per job created (see the previous fraudulent argument) – because a large fraction of any tax cut will simply be saved.” Rather than accept this, Krugman said, “conservatives take refuge in a nonsensical argument against public spending in general.”
Jim Manzi of National Review Online questions the impact of the stimulus plan when substantially more of the outlays occur in 2012 or later than in 2009. “If this is a ‘normal’ length recession, the spending bill will have the classic problem that fiscal stimulus does – namely, it comes too late to do much good, but right on time to help stoke inflation and misallocation of resources that are suddenly in high demand as the economy enters a recovery. And if this is a very long-lasting recession, more like a U.S. 1930s Depression or Japan 1990s ‘lost decade,’ then the problem is so long-lasting that we’re not really debating a stimulus bill, we’re debating a near-permanent shift of control of resources to the government, which doesn’t exactly have a sterling track record of success. Only if this is a ‘Goldilocks-length’ recession of more than one to two years but less than a decade (which is a pretty hard beast to find in modern American history) would this temporal spending pattern turn out to be wise.”
With President Barack Obama having pledged support for expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, all Democratic congressional leaders needed to do was revive one of the two bills that had been vetoed by President George W. Bush. Instead, they changed the legislation and ended up politicizing a cause that had broad GOP support, including from Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan. To Democrats’ contention that 90 percent of the latest bill is unchanged, Roberts said, “It’s the 10 percent that represents barbed wire and a heck of a burr underneath our saddles.” Especially with federal spending going wild, Republicans have a point in questioning whether it’s wise to give states the go-ahead to cover children in families with incomes exceeding three times the federal poverty level – $63,600 for a family of four. Less understandable is GOP outrage over the new provision allowing more children of legal immigrants to be covered; currently, they must have been in the country for at least five years to qualify. Why punish the children of documented immigrants who are paying taxes and otherwise following the rules? SCHIP, known as HealthWave in Kansas, has been a bipartisan godsend to many families over the past decade. It will be regrettable if its long-sought expansion ends up bearing only a Democratic seal of approval.
In response to Barack Obama’s order last week easing restrictions on the use of federal family planning money overseas, Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., declared in a press release that Obama “will be remembered forever . . . as the Abortion President.” Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee thundered that the order reflected “Obama’s sweeping abortion agenda.”
Columnist Davis Merritt responded: “Such overheated language is neither accurate nor helpful. Neither Obama nor anyone else wants more abortions; everyone on all sides of the issue would like to reduce the need for them. But trying to stamp out abortion by legal force or moral persuasion rather than through education is in fact fruitless.”
Merritt argued that women’s health clinics in poor countries by necessity provide a range of education about such things as sexual and neonatal health, maternal nutrition, breast-feeding, contraception and AIDS prevention in addition to information about abortions. “Denying operating funds to such clinics cannot stem the tide of abortions; in fact, the opposite is likely true: that unintended pregnancies – and thus abortions – are reduced by the education those clinics provide.”
“Some are literally salivating.” – House Minority Leader Paul Davis, D-Lawrence, on Republicans eyeing K-12 schools for budget cuts
“Now, they know we won’t love them in the morning.” – Sen. Janis Lee (in photo), D-Kensington, on how schools would be affected by GOP senators’ proposed “sucker punch” cuts
“The solution is not (lawmakers). The solution is the people of Kansas.” – Rep. Melvin Neufeld, R-Ingalls, on the “tough choices” ahead on the state budget
“It felt like a 10-pound anvil was lifted off my head.” – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on how she felt seeing Marine One lift off the Capitol grounds on Jan. 20 with George W. Bush aboard
“I just don’t think that’s the way a president should enter office.” – Former Bush chief of staff Andy Card, on the anti-Bush tone of President Barack Obama’s inaugural address
“I’m a lefty. Get used to it.” – Obama, the sixth southpaw in chief since the end of World War II, speaking as he signed his first official documents
Many of the opponents of President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan are not arguing in good faith, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman contends. He noted how they have used faulty math to exaggerate the cost of the jobs expected to be created by the stimulus. He also contends that “it’s clear that when it comes to economic stimulus, public spending provides much more bang for the buck than tax cuts – and therefore costs less per job created (see the previous fraudulent argument) – because a large fraction of any tax cut will simply be saved.” Rather than accept this, Krugman said, “conservatives take refuge in a nonsensical argument against public spending in general.”
