Let's Pretend

Forget for just a minute that it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to know that you can’t borrow your way into financial health and prosperity. For just a moment, pretend that the quickest way to become financially secure and not live pay check to pay check is to NOT pay off all your debts. Forget for just a moment that America’s life blood is a free market economy and it really is no business of the federal government to try and manipulate the stock market, housing prices or mortgage rates or who should qualify for a loan, or to bail out struggling private industries with money forcefully collected from it’s citizens or to put people to work.

Now that we’re living in fantasy land, for argument’s sake, let’s say it’s a good idea for the government to dish out almost a trillion tax payer dollars to try and stimulate a struggling economy. President Obama is warning us that if we don’t do this, we will find ourselves in an economic mess we may never recover from.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/08/obama-economic-speech-war_n_156171.html

The House of Representatives has already voted on and passed their version of the “stimulus” package. The Senate is debating on their version as we speak. Now that we’ve agreed (again, purely for arguments sake) that this is a good idea, how should this great big pile of cash be spent? You’d think they’d want to concentrate on creating a bunch of new jobs and giving the tax payers a break so they’d have more money in their own pockets to spend, right? Well, you’d be wrong. Here are some examples of how they want to spend this trillion dollars.

$75 million for "smoking cessation activities."
$150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities
$88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship).
$25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction.
$1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion.
$10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.
$400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD's
$246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film.
$650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program
$1.2 billion for "youth activities," including youth summer job programs.
$160 million for "paid volunteers" at the Corporation for National and Community Service.
$200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/02/gop.stimulus.worries/index.html

That’s just a small sample of the house “stimulus” package. They also want to spend a lot more on making the government “green” or forcing the rest of us toward a greener life to combat…dare I say it…global warming! My point is nothing good ever comes from trying to borrow your way out of debt or into financial stability. This “so-called” stimulus package MAY create a FEW jobs, but it is mainly a special interest money grab and a side door to battle the Al Gore's boogey man of global warming and it will end up be nothing less than a recipe for national financial ruin.

Oh...I forgot. What are you getting out of the trillion dollar hand out? $500 bucks. $1000 for couples. See? President Obama promised he'd take care of you.

Despite what the 24 news media and congress wants you to believe, we are not in a depression, nor are we even suffering from the worst recession since the 1930’s. Unemployment is still below 7% nationally, interest rates are the lowest EVER, inflation is virtually non existent, and pre-owed housing sales actually rose by 6% last month. I admit times are rough, (especially if you are included in the group that lost your job) and the near future doesn’t look that much brighter. BUT...we are not in desperate times. And even if we were, spending a trillion dollars isn’t going to make it better. All it is going to do is turn the United States of America into the largest debtor in the world I urge you, email or call your senator.

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators

Tell them to vote NO on the stimulus package. Let him or her know that you don’t want our country to be burdened by another trillion dollars of debt on a situation, that if left alone ( i.e. the government minds it’s own business or better yet actually cuts back on spending) will eventually work itself out.

Or...you can just sit back and let the government decide everything for you. That's what we elected them for, right? So we could watch American Idol while our country slides hopelessly toward socialism?