"Republicans -- short on new ideas, low on votes and deeply unpopular in the polls -- have been winning the media war over the president's central initiative.
They have done so largely by focusing on minor bits of the stimulus that amount, as Obama said in at least two of his network interviews, to "less than 1 percent of the overall package." But Republicans have succeeded in defining the proposal by its least significant parts."
Read the whole article here...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/04/AR2009020402835.html
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The "less than 1%" argument is a straw man. Conservatives and most Republicans don't like the vast majority of the bill. Sure the most outrageous and ridiculous items that received the most outcry may have amounted to less than 1%. That frankly is a problem in itself. $8,000,000,000.00 would STILL be less than 1% of the total bill. That's a lot of zeros.
Things like giving the Dept. of Education $142 billion, the Dept. of Energy $35 billion, and states that overran their Medicaid budgets $87 billion will not stimulate the economy. We can argue all day about whether they are worthwhile expenditures, but the bottom line is they will not stimulate the economy. If my math is correct, those 3 things alone add up to over 25% of the bill.
If Obama really wants to provide a stimulus, then he would want the most direct injection of capital to the public at large. That's why I was such a big fan of Rep. Louie Gohmert's plan. He said that if we're already determined to go $1 trillion further into debt, we could just give all Americans a federal tax holiday for the entire year of 2009. Although I don't agree with any bill to place us more than a trillion more in the hole, that would work far better than this huge pile of horse excrement being touted now. Sorry for the rant, talk to you soon!
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