Mark Sanford on the stimulus bill
Mark Sanford's thoughts on the stimulus bill on CNN.com
The most crucial piece:
" As for the jobs created in the short-term, what's the cost? The Heritage Foundation crunched the president's own numbers and came up with this startling figure: for every single job the bill creates, American taxpayers will spend $223,000.
Examining the bill's contents makes clear just how foolhardy that is. What stimulant effect will we get from the $180 million of spending on "diplomatic and consular services?" Should taxpayers really be doling out $300 million for what one newspaper described as "streamlined golf carts?"
And, even though it didn't make it into the final version of the bill, why would anyone even consider letting the very investment bankers whose companies just pulled down a few hundred million dollars in TARP funds to be in line to receive a $15,000 government credit for buying a new Hamptons beach house?
Finally, history shows us quite clearly that a government cannot spend its way out of an economic downturn. It didn't work in Japan in the 1990s, when the 10 stimulus packages implemented over an eight year period failed to prevent the "lost decade." And the New Deal, which the president's supporters are so quick to point to?
Here are the thoughts of Henry Morgenthau, FDR's Treasury Secretary: "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. ... I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... And an enormous debt to boot!" "
The most crucial piece:
" As for the jobs created in the short-term, what's the cost? The Heritage Foundation crunched the president's own numbers and came up with this startling figure: for every single job the bill creates, American taxpayers will spend $223,000.
Examining the bill's contents makes clear just how foolhardy that is. What stimulant effect will we get from the $180 million of spending on "diplomatic and consular services?" Should taxpayers really be doling out $300 million for what one newspaper described as "streamlined golf carts?"
And, even though it didn't make it into the final version of the bill, why would anyone even consider letting the very investment bankers whose companies just pulled down a few hundred million dollars in TARP funds to be in line to receive a $15,000 government credit for buying a new Hamptons beach house?
Finally, history shows us quite clearly that a government cannot spend its way out of an economic downturn. It didn't work in Japan in the 1990s, when the 10 stimulus packages implemented over an eight year period failed to prevent the "lost decade." And the New Deal, which the president's supporters are so quick to point to?
Here are the thoughts of Henry Morgenthau, FDR's Treasury Secretary: "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. ... I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... And an enormous debt to boot!" "