Obama Stimulus Package Breakdown

[cobra de capell]

Originally Posted by 427 S/O

Courtesy of Glenn Beck
January 26, 2009 - 11:16 ET


What is the money being spent on-general breakdown between infrastructure, tax cuts, etc…?

Some highlights of the package, by the numbers:

• $825 billion total (as of 1/15/09)
• $550 billion in new spending, described as thoughtful and carefully targeted priority investments with unprecedented accountability measures built in.
• $275 billion in tax relief ($1,000 tax cut for families, $500 tax cut for individuals through SS payroll deductions)
• $ 90 billion for infrastructure
• $ 87 billion Medicaid aid to states
• $ 79 billion school districts/public colleges to prevent cutbacks
• $ 54 billion to encourage energy production from renewable sources
• $ 41 billion for additional school funding ($14 billion for school modernizations and repairs, $13 billion for Title I, $13 billion for IDEA special education funding, $1 billion for education technology)
• $ 24 billion for "health information technology to prevent medical mistakes, provide better care to patients and introduce cost-saving efficiencies" and "to provide for preventative care and to evaluate the most effective healthcare treatments."
• $ 16 billion for science/technology ($10 billion for science facilities, research, and instrumentation; $6 billion to expand broadband to rural areas)
• $ 15 billion to increase Pell grants by $500
• $ 6 billion for the ambiguous "higher education modernization."

What's this?...54 billion to encourage energy production from renewable sources!!!????. 'encourage' what the he$$ does this mean?, if their looking for someone to 'encourage', I'm ready!, for just a little bit of that $54 bil.

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/art...98/20639/?ck=1

Also, on the package list.....

- $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn't turned a profit in 40 years;

- $2 billion for child-care subsidies;

- $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts;

- $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects.

- There's even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.

- Congress wants to spend $600 million more for the federal government to buy new cars. Uncle Sam already spends $3 billion a year on its fleet of 600,000 vehicles. Congress also wants to spend $7 billion for modernizing federal buildings and facilities. The Smithsonian is targeted to receive $150 million; we love the Smithsonian, too, but this is a job creator?

- Another "stimulus" secret is that some $252 billion is for income-transfer payments - that is, not investments that arguably help everyone, but cash or benefits to individuals for doing nothing at all.

- There's $81 billion for Medicaid, $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits, $20 billion for food stamps, and $83 billion for the earned income credit for people who don't pay income tax. While some of that may be justified to help poorer Americans ride out the recession, they aren't job creators.

As for the promise of accountability, some $54 billion will go to federal programs that the Office of Management and Budget or the Government Accountability Office have already criticized as "ineffective" or unable to pass basic financial audits.

As Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it, "We won the election. We wrote the bill." So they did. Republicans should let them take all of the credit.

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before."

So said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in November.

We are so screwed.

[bomelia]

Its a darn good thing I can hold myself above the fray.

BTW, did you hear about the lawsuit to make the Appilachian Trail handicap accessible? Yup. The whole darn thing. You guys living out west, the PCT is next.

Mike

[Fred Douglass]

The Appalachians are "shovel-ready"! Didn't you hear the rest of that story? They're going to blast off the tops of all the tallest mountains, backfill the steeper valleys with with the resulting rubble and then build handicap-accessible ramps up the resultant hills (note: "hills", not "mountains").

THAT oughta head off the burgeoning unemployment problem!

Ar, etc.

[VRM]

The DNC is not solely responsible for this mess.

Subprime loans are nothing new - they did not just pop up at the request of Frank/Dodd. When you have a lower credit score you will pay more for a loan. When your loan is bundled as an asset it will have a higher risk rating, but it will also have a higher payoff IF the loan is paid off and is not defaulted. Adding more subprime loans is not necessarily a bad thing. Adding loans that had little to no chance of being paid off is a bad thing. Some of this was Barney Frank, but most of it was just plain greed on the part of the lenders. They got paid for every loan they wrote. And then the underwriters passed the risk of the loans on to investors by the securitisation of those mortgages, so there we no incentive for them to properly scrutinise those loans - in fact it was exactly the opposite, thanks to deregulation championed by GOP senator and McCain financial adviser Phil Gramm, and signed by Clinton.

That said, I agree with Freddie - tax cuts will be the biggest shot in the arm with the quickest results. I also want to invest in some medium and long term results.

$825B

$650B tax cut - Every family that makes between $40-200K would get it.

$50B fed infrastructure

$50B state infrastructure - divided by population amongst states.

$50B Alternate energy R&D

$25B math/science education

[cobra de capell]

Some of this was Barney Frank, but most of it was just plain greed on the part of the lenders.

It's not that simply - the 'lender' was often not the entity that documented the loan - it was a mortgage broker with those people and companies completely separate from lenders and Fannie/Freddie - it's those people that cheated right and left - lied on documentation and encouraged potential house owners to lie - in the millions. Plus Barney has a lot more to do with it than you can even imagine - it was Barney and his pals that instructed Fannie/Freddie to be more lenient so that poor people could get into a house, in the millions. Fannie/Freddie turned around and packaged the loans, sold them to the market as A-1 paper and the market was sufficiently stupid (because huge bucks) to package and re-package the loans as derivatives that got so complicated that even the market could not understand them. The big banks bought the derivatives.

Actually, all these entities deserved to go down or to jail – just for being stupid. It's government involvement - relaxing lending standard to almost zero that started this mess - government needs to butt out but that's not what's happening even now.

As an aside, this whole thing is classic - huge numbers of people that think they are smarter than they actually are, buying stuff that they didn't even understand. Risk management went south - big time.

[VRM]

CdC,
If Barney Frank had been the only one involved then none of this would have happened.
I used lenders in a general term...perhaps I should not have. I completely agree with the rest of what you said (that's a first, huh?). Especially the part about jail!

[cobra de capell]

Originally Posted by VRM

CdC,
If Barney Frank had been the only one involved then none of this would have happened.
I used lenders in a general term...perhaps I should not have. I completely agree with the rest of what you said (that's a first, huh?). Especially the part about jail!

True, Barney was just more vocal over time - even the former head gay at Countywide went on record stating that there is no value in forcing people to put money down, like 20%, on a house - that the risk is the same with no money down. What BS - he just wanted to make more loans and sell them to unsuspecting buyers in the secondary market. White collar crime needs another look with people having heart attacks, dying and generally depressed when they loose their house. It just seems criminal when "lenders" don't do the right thing and allow people to buy on the come, e.g. the house they are buying will continue to go up, therefore they can afford a huge rate adjustment in the future. I'd sure like to see laws fully enforced and more laws to protect the public, sometimes from themselves.

Basically, people are stupid.