Republicans: The Audacity of Nope

"For every dollar (in the stimulus package) that is spent to help small businesses, $4 is being spent to help upkeep the grass on the lawns of Washington."

-- Eric Cantor (R-VA, Minority Whip)



PolitiFact has a couple things to say about that rather broad misrepresentation.

My comment: More distortion and spin in the hope of continued public ignorance; based on the assumption that no one is paying attention to the full story.

It seems the Republican answer to everything is to cut taxes the only source of revenue our government has to pay for the current stimulus pagkage ... besides borrowing.

They say cutting taxes will stimulate the economy and they complain that some items in the stimulus package won't kick in for a year or more. They neglect the fact that many of the items in the package have a multiplier effect. Increases in unemployment benefits, for example, provide $1.70 of economic effect for every $1.00 in benefits. Tax cuts provide a significantly lower rate of return (if memory serves, it's on the order of $1.07 for every $1.00 in tax cuts). But that doesn't matter. We MUST cut taxes (and borrow more). In the meantime, most individual tax payers won't see any effect from tax cuts for at least a year. The companies they work for will continue with hold. Any tax relief will be seen in the form of a tax return on 1040's filed in April 2009 ... distributed in May and June of 2009. I don't know what other people plan to do with their tax relief, but I plan to pay down my mortgage and pay other on-going bills. Neither of those things will stimulate the economy.

They oppose investments in infrastructure. In my opinion, that's about as short sighted as one can possibly get! Repairing our faltering infrastructure will create jobs throughout the nation. Those jobs (even if they ARE government jobs) are not the busy work as some on the right would have us believe. Our infrastructure is the foundation for our entire economy. It is the way we move goods from one place to another ... the more efficiently you can move things to market, the more profitable your company is. Or perhaps it would be better if individual companies invested their profits, contracted road and bridge outfits, and built their own infrastructure? (Government is the problem, ya see ... and maybe if we get the government out of the infrastructure business, we'd be a whole lot better off.)

I think the Republicans have already forgotten that they ran the 2006 and 2008 elections on a platform of tax cuts ... and lost big time. Their philosophy of tax cuts, more tax cuts, deregulation and unrestricted "free market" economics have left our economic vehicle firmly in a ditch. Their idea of getting us out of the ditch is to do more of what got us here in the first place.

I'm thinking the "funnest" part of their objections came when they quoted a Congressional Budget Office report(*) that didn't exist ... as in, they just made stuff up! But, it's not the first time for 'em. (Here's an overview of the REAL report, issued on Jan 26th.)

If the Republicans want to object, they're better served offering suggestions on how to get the stimulus package to positively effect taxpayers sooner and by demonstrating exactly how their ideas will work better. Ideological objections are so Bush Administration!

It gets better ... then Eric Cantor says: "The stimulus bill includes "$300,000 for a sculpture garden in Miami."



But do a word search on "sculpture" in the 647-page stimulus bill now before the House and you'll come up blank. That's because it's not in there.

... get the rest of the story on Politifact after the click.

My comment: It troubles me how smug he seems on TV as he lies and distorts through his teeth.