What we expect the stimulus to look like

Today, the House Republican Whip Eric Cantor released a rough comparison of the "final" Democrat stimulus package and how it compares to the Republican alternative.  

Note the use of quotations around the word "final."  This points to the fact that even though the House voted 403-0 on a Republican motion to make the stimulus conference report public earlier in the week, no on knows exactly what is in the "final" bill except for the privileged few who were part of the closed door meetings to draft the conference report.

ANALYSIS:  
(As No Text Has Been Provided To The General Public, This Analysis Is Based On Press Reports And Rumor) 

Cost: 
Cost of the "Final" Democrat Spending Bill: $790 Billion
Cost of the House Republican Alternative: $477 Billion

Jobs:

Number of Jobs Created by the "Final" Democrat Spending Bill: 3.5 million

Number of Jobs Created by the House Republican Alternative: 6.2 million

Tax Cuts:
Percentage of Bill that President Obama Wanted for Tax Relief: 40%
Percentage of "Final" Democrat Spending Bill Dedicated for Tax Relief: 26%
Percentage of "Final" Democrat Spending Bill Dedicated for Tax Relief Minus the Alternative Minimum Tax Patch, Which Doesn't Provide any American with new Tax Relief: 17.5% 

Tax Relief For Working Families:
"Final" Democrat Spending Bill: Tax relief phased-out for some income taxpayers. Congressional Democrats reduced middle class tax relief by $29 billion to fund their spending priorities for "pet projects" for mice and golf carts. Benefit is now capped at $400 a year for an individual and $800 a year for a married couple. 

For an individual, the tax relief equates to:

$7.70 a week
$1.10 a day 
19 cents a working hour

House Republican Alternative: Tax relief for 100% of income taxpayers. Minimum average relief would be $500 per year. Most families would see relief closer to $1,500 per year. A married couple will see relief as high as $3,200 a year.

 

Tax Relief For Small Businesses:
"Final" Democrat Spending Bill: No provision.

House Republican Alternative: Tax deduction equal to 20% of their income for those small businesses with 500 or fewer employees.

 

Tax Relief For Employers:

"Final" Democrat Spending Bill: While initially identical, the "final" bill limited this benefit to firms with limited income, leaving out not only large employers, but also many small businesses. Initially, research indicated that over 290,000 employers, with a combined total of over 77 million employees, could be excluded from this tax relief as a result of this last minute change.

House Republican Alternative: Allow employers to offset their current losses against past tax liabilities (net operating loss carryback)

How many jobs will this create?

Washington Times: Pelosi's mouse slated for $30 million slice of cheese.

"Talk about a pet project. A tiny mouse with the longtime backing of a political giant may soon reap the benefits of the economic-stimulus package.

Lawmakers and administration officials divulged Wednesday that the $789 billion economic stimulus bill being finalized behind closed doors in Congress includes $30 million for wetlands restoration that the Obama administration intends to spend in the San Francisco Bay Area to protect, among other things, the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse."

Posted by: Press Secretary

Morning Must Reads

USA Today: Opposing View: "Stop the Spending Sprees" by Michael Steele 

Wall Street Journal Editorial: "Obama's Legislative Victory Comes at High Cost" by Karl Rove

Posted by: Press Secretary

How much is a trillion anyway?...continued...

If you spent $1000 every second, day and night, you wouldn't hit a trillion dollars for 30 years.

If you asked for a trillion dollars at your bank in $100 bills, it would make a stack 800 miles high.

Laid out end-to-end, a trillion dollars worth of $1 bills would extend from the Earth to the Sun.

Posted by: Press Secretary

How big is a trillion anyway?

"A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money."  Senator Everett Dirksen is said to have coined the phrase that has become famous for describing Congress' spending habits.  You can only wonder what he'd say today to describe the Democrats' trillion dollar stimulus.

But what exactly is a trillion?  What does a trillion of anything look like?  It's hard to get your mind around, but here are some examples:

• One million seconds equals 1 week, 4 days, and some change.
  
• One billion seconds equals 31 years, 251 days, and some change.
  
• One trillion seconds equals 31,688 years, 269 days, and some change.
  

or...

$1 trillion would be enough money to buy 1,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies for every person in the United States. 

Morning Must Reads

Bloomberg: Democrats Face Calls for Cuts on Final Stimulus Bill

Wall Street Journal: A Health-Tech Monopoly 

Posted by: Press Secretary

Democrats write conference report under cover of darkness

Re-posted from Republican Leader John Boehner's blog:

DEMOCRATS’ MIDNIGHT “STIMULUS” POWER PLAY

Posted by Dave on February 11th, 2009

So this is “transparency” under the Democratic regime. . .

It appears that Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid’s staff met all through the night in secret with Democratic conferees’ staff to cobble together the “stimulus” conference report.  Republican conferees were frozen out.

The objective appears to be to produce a final conference report on the trillion-dollar spending bill by this afternoon so that floor action can take place in both chambers by Thursday.

They intend to ram this trillion-dollar spending bill through with as little debate and scrutiny as possible.

The House voted unanimously yesterday in support of a Republican measure stating that the American people should have 48 hours to review the bill prior to passage.  Will Democrats follow through?  Or will they do the opposite of what they voted to do yesterday?

Posted by: Press Secretary