Linkfest: Updates on the "Stimulus"
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How's that tax-rebate, needs-to-be-quick, bipartisan fiscal "stimulus" package doing?
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I blogged previously:
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Having made sure that people who actually pay high income taxes do not get a check (which would be too fair — go figure), and having made sure that the working poor who pay no income taxes do get a check (which would mean this is not a rebate but welfare — go figure), who could the politicians, drenched in their "bipartisanship," possibly have forgotten?
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As I mentioned previously, the "needed fast" rebate checks can't be mailed before May at the earliest. Of course, "needed fast" really only means "needed before the November elections," so the politicians are all set.
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Guess who (besides poke-in-the-eye taxpayers like me) doesn't like the stimulus package? Economists. Go figure.
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Guess who also doesn't like the stimulus package? The New York Times. But of course not for the same reasons that the economists don't like it. Go figure.
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I blogged previously:
This $150 billion disgrace ... still faces review — bloating? — in the Senate ...We can now lose the question mark:
Shrugging off a personal plea from President Bush, senators from both parties said yesterday that they will push for significant additions to the $150 billion stimulus package hammered out Thursday by House leaders and the administration.Senators from both parties? Who could have seen that coming?
Nothing obliterates gridlock and replaces it with "bipartisanship" more quickly and more completely than incumbent entrenchment (cf. "campaign finance reform"). And what could possibly endear unsophisticated voters more to their representative in Congress (or to the party of their president) than a check?Acta es fabula, plaudite!
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Having made sure that people who actually pay high income taxes do not get a check (which would be too fair — go figure), and having made sure that the working poor who pay no income taxes do get a check (which would mean this is not a rebate but welfare — go figure), who could the politicians, drenched in their "bipartisanship," possibly have forgotten?
Retirees living off Social Security are frustrated that they won't get tax rebate checks through a bipartisan economic stimulus package before the House. Senate Democrats Friday began efforts to include them.Ah yes, the entitlement elderly. Can't let them go without sucking some more taxpayer blood, right? Senators are tripping over themselves to introduce checks for them, among other vote-buying measures, possibly to the point of a conference committee showdown with the House. Stay tuned...
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[The House plan] would leave out about 20 million senior citizens living chiefly on Social Security. ... "Less than half of all Americans 65 and older would get it," said AARP spokesman Jim Dau.
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As I mentioned previously, the "needed fast" rebate checks can't be mailed before May at the earliest. Of course, "needed fast" really only means "needed before the November elections," so the politicians are all set.
---
Guess who (besides poke-in-the-eye taxpayers like me) doesn't like the stimulus package? Economists. Go figure.
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Guess who also doesn't like the stimulus package? The New York Times. But of course not for the same reasons that the economists don't like it. Go figure.
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Posted by Kip on
27 January 2008
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