Extra TARP Money? What Extra TARP Money?
Obama is making headlines today with his announced intent to use “extra” TARP money on more economic “stimulus” money. According to Obama, there’s $200 billion just sitting there in TARP and he means to spend it in the same way the “stimulus” money has been spent.
Now, setting aside for a moment the abject failure of the billions we’ve already spent on his “stimulus” schemes, maybe we should be asking why Obama thinks there’s extra money in TARP. As CNN reported:
The American public is still expected to incur a massive loss in the end—the question is just how much it will be. A separate estimate issued earlier this year by the Congressional Budget Office warned that TARP will ultimately cost taxpayers approximately $159 billion.
So Obama is going to take $200 billion out of a program that was already projected to lose $159 billion and call it…profit? More money for more spending?
More fiscal sleight of hand from Obama that, ultimately, will just bring us more deficit and debt.
T-riffic! What does that have to do with the fact that your own party has come out and said the stimulus didn’t work so lets do it again? You keep ignoring that fact.
Really, was that why you guy’s were all for it in the beginning? Remember Zero saying we have to pass this right now with no debate or we would get sucked into a black hole. Now you want to pretend that “We all knew”! Bah, you can’t even be consistent from one day to the next. Who could expect you to be consistent from one month to the other.
I’m at work, which right now means waiting for my flight to Maine. Fun times.
They may have a diminished opportunities and we will have debt but its not from conservatism. You Dims are doing a good job at killing the golden goose. Don’t let facts get in the way of your Utopia Dino!
Sit its our own fault for using personal annecdotes at some point which DINO chooses to write down and remember so he can attack you with them later. You have now explained yourself, let us ignore any attempt to use it in the future.
DINO has a very empty liberal life and his only jollies come from telling someone they are wrong on the internet. Being godless and ugly, annoying and liberal, he wishes he were living in the 60’s so he could find himself a 12 year old boy or girl plastered on drugs to get his jollies with. But thats not acceptable any longer so he is full of hatred for anyone with morals.
You mean like those Republicans that voted in SS and Medicare that make up the 62% of government spending (mandatory) that are leading us to ruin? Last time I checked that was a democrat boondoggle.
“Bottom line: There is little room to cut spending on non-defense items. Your ideas fall flat yet again.”
Real bottom line: All federal social spending can be cut. Social spending should be a matter, since the States can’t print their own money, and therefore have to live within their means. Defense spending is required of the federal govt by our Constitution.
Your lies are smacked with the truth again.
Funny Dino seems upset about Republican deficits but ignores the fact that
the Democrats are far worse.
You people don’t seriously think dino has a clue, do you?
Dino- “When we compared numbers, despite his making 4 times what i did, he paid a smaller percentage than i did.” Yah, and he pays smaller percentage of his income for a loaf of bread, a car, gasoline, ect. So what? What`s your point? From the taxfoundation.org today- For the first time, the top 1% of wage earners pay more income tax than THE BOTTOM 95%. 451 billion vs. 439 billion. Read it and weep. You lose.
Well I’ve just spoke w/ my son.
He said “Don’t worry about the TART money Dad. I will pay it back some time in my near future.”
I love that kid.
Dad
Dino, the very first paragraph of the article you linked to disagrees with you. The stimulus worked so well that we need a second big stimulus! Kinda agrees with what I said in the other thread. Democrats don’t really believe that the stimulus did anything so let’s do it again!
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bi...
Spend a lotta money get nothing! Do it again!
These guys spend money like water.
The CBO predicted the economy would rise by now if we did nothing! So we’ve paid all this money to get nothing. Now you want us to pay even more!
That’s why he wears a mask.
Obfuscation.
Bottom line: There is little room to cut spending on non-defense items. Your ideas fall flat yet again.
Sorry, not buying that whole “saved or created” bit. It sounds and smells like BS. If the stimulus is working so well, why fudge the numbers to hide the employment decline? To the contrary, the loose reporting for those jobs was intentionally set up to obfuscate the truth – just like Obama’s website was intentionally set up to receive illegal donations. There is no other rational explanation for such loose criteria. Furthermore, “shovel-ready” for the sake of construction employment is a joke. We would have been better off just paying longer unemployment than spending $222,491 for each of those temp jobs. To print that much money for so little gain is a disgrace. And to pretend there’s “extra” non-money is worse.
As well they should since they control so much of the wealth.
Chances are good your kids end up chained to tables working for the top 1%.
No way to refute anything I posted so the mental giant posts crap.
Think I closed it.
GDP was declining at a rate of 6%. It no longer is. However, more stimulus is probably needed since the private sector is not responding with enough growth or investment.
Remember how predictions can turn out. Recall that bush predicted a surplus by 2009. Recall that reagan promised a no-tax Utopia. Recall that Greenspan said financial markets would self-regulate.
Doing nothing wasn’t an option. Staying the course set by conservatives who took us to the edge of ruin is not an option. That’s why McCain lost.
The conservatives have had that goose by the throat for 30 years. Too bad for your kids.
Work hard. They’ll need your support for many, many years.
Imagine, Dino, that the predictions of the Keynesians are wrong 90% of the time, which is why every jobs report is an “unexpected” change from the trend, and that maybe, just maybe, spending half a million bucks apiece to create jobs paying $60k on the average isn’t exactly a good idea.
Put differently, Keynes’ “Paradox of Thrift” runs aground on Bastiat’s “That which is not seen,” as any dollar I earn goes into spending, saving, taxes, or giving, no matter what, and does its work as revenue, borrowing, taxes, or giving in the same way. So to take a dollar out of my hands and put it into the grubby paws of a benevolent bureaucrat is simply to divert that dollar from its best use–and reduce the benefits of human action.
And Comrade Zero’s plan? Sorry, but if you want to stimulate the economy, you return (again, Bastiat, available free from the Mises Institute) those dollars to the private sector and reduce the government load on the economy. It worked for Kennedy, it worked for Reagan, it worked for Clinton, it worked for Bush, and it could even work for Dear Leader. Reducing government spending and debt is almost always a good idea.
So you still can’t answer a simple question – must suck to be too dumb to express percentages, or too dishonest to admit you don’t currently and don’t want to pay your fair share for your Utopian dream.
Her estate paid for it all years ago dumbo – you just can’t seem to admit that some people were smart enough to see what the future held and made provision for it.
And here’s another little piece of trivial info for you, facilities like hers require that residents fill out all applicable forms for government assistance, but the one she is in has never filed them for any of the residents and won’t unless they run out of their money. Money paid by the residents for the privilege of having a place to live and health care for life. That’s how long term care facilities operate, but you obviously aren’t smart enough to express a simple percentage so no one would expect you to know that. Typical liberal stupidity, pretty disgusting and not something I would admit to.
DINO isn’t even smart enough to know what he doesn’t know. But yanking his chain every now and then is fun. He thinks his childish jibing and arguments mean something and maybe they do to him, but for the most part his rants are like farting in the wind, lots of noise, maybe a whiff of something foul, but it’s gone real fast.
I got into this debate with a stem years ago. He was complaining that he paid too high a percentage in taxes. When we compared numbers, despite his making 4 times what I did, he paid a smaller percentage than I did. It was a small difference but smaller just the same.
Your mother has everything to do with this. You are sticking the greater society with the bills to take care of your mother and then bitching about taxes.
The stimulus is widely accepted to have worked.
Imagine for a moment if Obama had done nothing and allowed the free fall to continue. To allow the economy, the GDP already having shrunk by 6%, to continue dropping. Even the idiot fratboy said government needed to spend like crazy to stop the bleeding. Want me to post that speech from Sept 2008 again?
That’s precisely what you wanted to happen. That the government collapse and be rendered totally ineffective so your wet dream of a free market Utopia would come to fruition. Makes me wonder about your sanity or how much you care about your families, most of whom would have suffered greatly at the hands of the capitalist predators a government collapse would unleash.
Too bad you people weren’t worried about deficit and debt when you ran the country.
You mental giants can make all the predictions you want. You’ve been doing that since Roosevelt rescued this country in the 1930s and kept the masses from murdering the wealthy in their beds and turning us communist. (Something I would have preferred, but oh well.)
The tax cutting trick has lost it’s effectiveness. It lost it long ago. There’s no much room to cut spending and still run the country considering how so little of spending is discretionary.
You ideas failed. Badly. Very badly.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda. None of which reflect reality. Just pure speculation.
Too bad you people voted republican all those years and supported the policies that led us to ruin. Now all you can do is predict what we should do and what might happen.
Not that anybody believes or cares what the losers think after the destruction they visited upon the country.
http://useconomy.about.com/od/fy2008budget/p/2008_Discretion.htm
The total Discretionary spending in FY 2006 was $1.017 trillion, which is 38% of total Federal budget spending. Of this, over half is what OMB calls Security-related spending. This is spending for the Department of Defense, Homeland Security and the War on Terror.
The rest is non-security spending. The largest departments are Health and Human Services, Education, Veterans Administration and the State Department. These four agencies spend over half of the non-Security budget.
No wonder you people keep supporting republicans. You’re dumb as a bag of hammers.
That’s like saying “Honey, 75% of what I make goes to food and shelter! Can’t we move into the streets and feed cat food to the kids?”
That money provides us with a great return on our money in quality of life and well, social security. Compare that to the trillions spent on defense that allowed a few guys with boxcutters to attack us.
Then again, I wouldn’t expect a conservative to understand the idea of quality of life beyond the material and monetary. People operating from the stem of the brain have little capacity to understand the higher needs of their fellow humans.
We’re supporting your mother. You should be more grateful.
Well, a typical non-answer. What else is new? I didn’t ask about your prior conversations or anything more complex than this:
What percentage of your income do you think is your “fair” share to support your utopian collective society?
Give us a number Dino. I’m sure you won’t since you are undoubtedly one of the freeloaders that through class envy think that everyone else should pay but not you.
And again the topic of the thread was wasteful pseudo-stimulus spending of money that we don’t have and that will only do more of the same – nothing but buy votes for Democrats.
I have no chains to yank. I don’t complain about government spending while the government takes care of my loved ones.
Hypocrisy bugs me.
Typical liberal non-logic. What we did didn’t work because we just didn’t get to do enough of it. WSJ had it right, the best thing congress can do for the economy is stop doing things and go home for a year.
“Non-discretionary spending” includes medicare, social security, and other entitlements.
Entitlements are considered non-discretionary for their setup, but sooner or later someone has to hold the bag and get screwed.
Your kids are screwed in any case. That’s what you get for voting republican.
So you make that much money and STILL can’t manage to pay for your own mother’s nursing home care?
That’s a typical conservatives for you. Pretty disgusting and not something I’d admit.
Ah yes, hindsight. Not that you didn’t have 30 years of dominance to make your ideas work.
Be glad the government is helping support your mother. And by government I mean the rest of us.
For reference, running water was an invention of the Romans about 2500 years ago, and ahem, if the Constitution means nothing, I want to live in a place where there is one that means something. Perhaps Dino would like to live in a nation without a functioning constitution, but those of us familiar with the history of the 20th century tend to prefer the rule of law.
Impeach Obama! He’s usurping the role of the legislature.
And Dino’s economic argument? Well, he’s blithely ignoring the fact that unemployment is 3% above the Obama prediction right now. Exactly why should we believe anyone using the exact same models that completely failed us this year? Let’s try a real argument; when you borrow a million bucks to create a job paying sixty grand, you are violating every rule of ROI that any freshman business or finance major knows instinctively. Let’s stop throwing good money after moronic ideas.
Since when do you believe CBO predictions?
And why would CBO’s predictions be any more reliable than anyone else’s? Not that I believe your interpretation in the first place.
That also doesn’t say what kind of decline we would have had or how much pain and suffering it would inflict. Now, if we could have made sure the pain was focusing solely on republicans/conservatives I would have been all for it. Hell, I would be all for doubling their pain and misery. Not that simply being a conservative isn’t a punishment unto itself.
We’ll just have to focus that pain on everyones’ kids over the next few decades.
Not that my mother has anything to do with this thread (as usual you throw that up to cover your inadequacy as an intelligent debater), but you more than likely support no one other than yourself if that. You are on the low-end of the wage earner curve so I’m guessing you’re one of the freeloaders who gets rebate and stimulus checks when you pay nothing in taxes to begin with. And you think that we that do pay the taxes in this country “owe” you something – wrong again, as always. So prove me wrong, put up your numbers or shut-up. I have asked you before and I am asking you again, how much as a percentage of your pitiful earnings are you willing to contribute. Either answer it or STFU.
40% of the stimulus was your magic tax cuts.
Only the simple-minded believed we’d pull out of this mess quickly. Most expected things to get much worse than they did.
Easy to play Monday morning QB.
Better get to work. The kids will need the help when they grow up into a world of diminished opportunity and debt thanks to your conservatism.
Well, Dino, if half of 1 trillion is actually defense, that corresponds pretty well to what part of the budget actually is Constitutionally authorized.
And speaking of Article 1 of the Constitution, exactly what part of it gives Dear Leader the right to appropriate money of his own volition? TARP was written to bail out the banks, so arguably it is NOT intended by Congress to be used by Dear Leader as his own personal Daleyesque slush fund.
If he goes through with it, it’s impeachment time. The Constitution means something, dangit.
Not that I even want to bother researching your weird claims and loose interpretations of what a handful of men said over 200 years ago before we even had running water, there is little correlation to anything specific in the Constitution. Unless you’d like to show me where sending a little car to Mars is authorized.
Bottom line: There is little to no specificity in the Constitution that is applicable to modern life.
Your claims, like your beliefs, are bogus and based on ignorance and an simplistic view of life. Unfortunately for you, we live in a large, complicated society that does not run on air and that will not be allowed to collapse to test your ideology’s failed theories yet again.
There is little reason to believe we can or will cut spending drastically without the streets running red with mostly conservative blood.
Dino – Still too complex a question for you I see.
I doubt that you support yourself let alone anyone else you freeloader. You’re just a typical liberal leech that wants everyone else to pay so you can have what you don’t have the brains, skills and balls to earn for yourself.
And FWIW – when YOUR tax bills go into multiple 6 figures you can lecture me about how I need to be grateful for others support. I’ve paid more money into the corrupt system in the last 6 months than you have in your entire life, and I know that I’ll never see a dime of it back, even though that’s the lie that the government tells people. Which means that if anyone is supporting my mom (and several others) it’s me.
If you voted republican all these years be glad if he doesn’t murder you in your sleep after he finds out whose policies led us to ruin.
Dino, are you seriously under the idea that we’re not going to need to rein in entitlement spending, for which responsible actuaries tell us the unfunded liabilities exceed the national wealth by a significant margin?
Sorry, but the liberal experiment has been tried, and the result is bankruptcy. Those who are doing their best to die in their forties may not give a ****, but those of us who have kids are starting to wake up to the damage that Roosevelt and Johnson did, and act accordingly.
Yes, you can start cutting entitlements. To not do so is to steal from today’s children, and those to be born. When you see a train wreck coming (called the “Great Society” and “New Deal”), you’re allowed to hit the brakes and cut the steam.
Ah, the persistence of the simple.
Non-defense discretionary spending amounts to NOTHING.
Liberalism’s reign from the 1930s to the 1980s was a time of great progress and strides in equality.
And really, reaching back to revise the Great Depression? Yes, the people were so enamored with the way conservatives of that time had run the economy for the prior 30 YEARS (sound familiar?) they gave Roosevelt 4 terms and reduced republicans to 19% of Congress by 1938.
If only McCain had won we’d be looking at driving a stake through the heart of conservatism in 2010.
No room to cut spending? Baloney. 80% of federal spending is not specifically authorized by Article 1. That’s about three trillion dollars we can cut. Let’s start with the 22 members of the First Lady’s Staff, go on to the NEA, any money going to ACORN or Planned Parenthood, and keep going….
And reducing the tax load from 25% (including borrowing) to around 5% wouldn’t stimulate the economy? Come on; imagine a 20% raise and tell me that your spending/investing patterns wouldn’t change.
Tons of room to cut spending. Start with 200 billion back from TARP, continue with the NEA, NEH, funding for ACORN, student loans for kids who need remedial classes in college (and have only 17% chance of graduating after 6 years), ethanol subsidies, corn subsidies, Michelle Obama’s 25 staffers, 35 czars, subsidies to Planned Parenthood, roll back the # of weeks of unemployment insurance, repeal the spend-u-more plan’s gutting of welfare reform….
….and then you can get to the big issues. We tried your ideas, Dina, and it kept the Depression going until Hitler marched into Poland, gave us Carter’s stagflation, and has given us the Obama recession’s depth. It’s time to stop listening to Keynes and start paying attention to Bastiat, Mises, Smith, and the classical economists.