Dear Sir/Madam: Increase the Size of Your Stimulus Package at Recovery.gov
Soon after taking office President Obama detailed plans for an $825 billion economic stimulus package, which goes before the House of Representatives later this week. Completely predictable battle lines were drawn on this weekend's talk shows: Republicans say the plan involves too much spending, and Democrats say it doesn't.
The real question, then, is this: does Barack Obama's stimulus package have a catchy name, or at least an acronym, like TARP or TALF? Sadly, no. He's calling it the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," aka ARRA. ARARA?
Meh. You disappoint me, BO.
At least the ARRA has its very own website, Recovery.gov, although right now it's just a landing page that says there won't be any real content until Congress passes the Act. Go on, get on the horn to your legislator. Hurry! I bet there will be innovative social networking tools to help us be a part of history!
Oh, and the site also promises this…
An oversight board will routinely update this site as part of an unprecedented effort to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government.
Well then.
I feel much better about spending $825 billion in taxpayer dollars if I know someone's going to be blogging about it.
RSS
But on a lighter note, I can't believe Jon Stewart hasn't picked up on "Obama's Massive Package". I even heard an NPR reporter ask a commentator about members of Congress who "are unhappy with the size or shape of this package". I laughed out loud! Of course, this joke would be totally not PC and in extremely poor taste, exactly what we tune into Comedy Central for!
While I'll admit that Global Poverty is a problem, it's not that cheap to get rid of and I really don't believe that the Borgen Project is considering the situation in each individual country nor the political effects of our involvement. Now, that being said, I'm all for trying; so don't get me wrong. But I'm also a America first kinda guy. I'd like to see us remove the homeless, poverty ridden and out of work American's before those around the globe. Fix our problems here first and then we can approach the problems around the world, if they even would like our help. After all, we shouldn't over extend ourselves when we're already in bad shape.
In regards to President Obama's Plan, I'm glad it's happening finally. "Cougar_Gal06" was right in the amount of money we spent on defense last year, though she left out the unstated discretionary spending portion of the budget allowed to the congress, which generally goes to defense (making it about 1.2-.5 trillion every year). When you think about it, Eight Hundred and Twenty Five Billion dollars on a campaign to help individual American's is something better than Seven Hundred billion to help banks (Especially when it goes said seven hundred billion is going unregulated and unwatched by the treasury department). Shoring up the old economy is all fine and good, I'll admit we need to keep our large automotive industry, if only for job's and defense purposes (though I'd like to see top management replaced). But to replace a the old with a new economy, based in brand new technology and systems that would make us not only competitive but Number one in the world would be wonderful. After all, ninety-eight percent of all green technology is developed in the United States before it is exported to other countries, Why shouldn't we take advantage of these brilliant minds? Why shouldn't we invest in the Minds of the future with public funding for schools? Why shouldn't we TRY? My generation is already going to pay about 115,000 dollars each in our life time, add on another hundred grand, I don't care. I would rather us try then not! To sit on my hands and do nothing is a dismal existence when the world crumbles, lets try for a little change in our time!
It's nice to see that Obama is trying to taking some steps to fix our domestic and internation problems. I hope that Congress with help shape a stimulus package that will actually benefit Americans in the long run and not just tie us over for a week or so. The war on terror will shift to the countries that are actually harboring terrorist instead of staying in a country that is now self-sufficient. Americans will get adequate health care and education, while we try to help change the image of our country for the rest of the world. One way of doing this is to help eliminate global poverty, domestic and foreign. The Borgen Project (www.borgenproject.org) has some interesting facts about global poverty and how reducing it will help our society. It would cost $19 billion to eliminate global poverty, which is extremely small compared ot the $522 billion the U.S. government spent on our defense budget last year. By eliminating global poverty we are setting ourselves up to have stronger allies or new ones, we open up the doors to new resources and help make our society safer to live in.