The sad thing about the "porkulus" bill
Side note: I usually dislike Rush Limbaugh, and find him overly right-wing for my tastes, but I do like his characterization of the gigantic pork wasteful spending package currently being inflated by both parties in Congress as the "porkulus" bill... kinda has a if not nice, extremely accurate ring to it. Anyway...
I hesitate to say "the" sad think about the enormous waste bill, as in fact there are many, many sad things about it. For example, it's sad that we're going to flush such an incomprehensibly gigantic amount of money down the toilet of special interest payouts. It's also sad that Congress is so corrupt, that even as a few voices of sanity can be heard proclaiming that the bill is a gigantic waste, the contemptible "financial conservative" Republicans are busy adding their own corrupt worthless scum pork to the bill. Surely some people must be also sad for future generations of Americans, who will either pay for this colossal waste with the sweat of their labor, or the stability of their country itself.
No, what occurs to me is the truly sad thing about this monument to corruption, waste, fear mongering, partisan politics, and everything which is wrong with Washington (everything Obama said he would strive to change, and is now spearheading) is not all of those. What's truly sad is that despite all of that, everybody knows what's going to happen:
- Congress will "debate" the bill for a while, adding more pork, until they have bought enough votes with special-interest corrupt handouts and waste to get their own agenda passed
- Congress will approve the bill, along partisan party lines, despite over a 90% disapproval among the voting population
- Obama will sign the bill, each party will claim success while blaming the other, the colossal amount of money will get printed and wasted, and politics will have been conducted as usual
At the end of the day, this will just go down in history as a story we'll tell our kids, huddled around the fire burning dollar bills to stay warm, about how it's just the way the world worked then. At the end of the day, no amount of outrage, rational thought, common sense, logical argument, or impassioned plea can or will stop politics as usual, and nobody will be surprised. That's the real sad thing.
I hesitate to say "the" sad think about the enormous waste bill, as in fact there are many, many sad things about it. For example, it's sad that we're going to flush such an incomprehensibly gigantic amount of money down the toilet of special interest payouts. It's also sad that Congress is so corrupt, that even as a few voices of sanity can be heard proclaiming that the bill is a gigantic waste, the contemptible "financial conservative" Republicans are busy adding their own corrupt worthless scum pork to the bill. Surely some people must be also sad for future generations of Americans, who will either pay for this colossal waste with the sweat of their labor, or the stability of their country itself.
No, what occurs to me is the truly sad thing about this monument to corruption, waste, fear mongering, partisan politics, and everything which is wrong with Washington (everything Obama said he would strive to change, and is now spearheading) is not all of those. What's truly sad is that despite all of that, everybody knows what's going to happen:
- Congress will "debate" the bill for a while, adding more pork, until they have bought enough votes with special-interest corrupt handouts and waste to get their own agenda passed
- Congress will approve the bill, along partisan party lines, despite over a 90% disapproval among the voting population
- Obama will sign the bill, each party will claim success while blaming the other, the colossal amount of money will get printed and wasted, and politics will have been conducted as usual
At the end of the day, this will just go down in history as a story we'll tell our kids, huddled around the fire burning dollar bills to stay warm, about how it's just the way the world worked then. At the end of the day, no amount of outrage, rational thought, common sense, logical argument, or impassioned plea can or will stop politics as usual, and nobody will be surprised. That's the real sad thing.
I have a six-month old baby. Assuming there isn’t hyperinflation, and I don’t think there will be, I’m pretty sure that when he gets his first job, some small portion of his pay will go to interest on this debt. The interest could easily be $1000 per year per taxpayer.
ReplyDeleteForgetting for the moment about the pork aspects of the stimulus, the stated purpose of this thing is to decrease the severity of the recession of 08-09. That sounds so lame. I was born during the recession of 74-75. People will hardly remember this recession in 30 years, but the debt will still be with us unless we suddenly become deficit hawks just after the recession ends. The year is 2011: The economy and inflation are really picking up. We need a 900 billion dollars of anti-stimulus, consisting primarily of a $1000 one-time tax on middle class families, temporary cuts in social spending, and a loan doc stamp tax on mortgages and car loans. That’s never going to happen.
I was born during 74-75 also, but I think people will remember this one. We're repeating the exact same steps that caused the Great Depression, from the bubble asset correction to the huge socialism injection and massive misguided government waste. Only this time, we don't have solid underlying personal savings, industrial backbone, or national financial stability: we're replaced them with massive person debt, dismantled and exported industry, a service-based economy with degraded work ethics and no personal responsibility, and a mind-blowingly massive national debt. Now some have argued that these will make the current situation different, and I might agree... but I don't think it will be any better.
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