Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Originally posted by: Acanthus
I had to read HR-01 in its entirety for a paper. (yeah 671 pages)
The gist:
-Education spending to make up for all the lost property tax revenue.
-Expanded welfare budgets to cover the newly and future unemployed.
-Expanded health care for children.
-Renovation of NASA, DOA, DOD, USGS, Museums, Schools, Public State Universities, Hospitals, Veterans Affairs Buildings, Section 8 housing, low income housing, and more for energy efficiency and general repairs.
-Repair of highways, roads, bridges, sewers, flood walls, and other infrastructure.
-Expanded college tuition funding through PELL.
-Expanded childcare for parents in college
-funding to states who are in a budget crisis due to lost tax revenue
-Buying a new fleet of fuel efficient vehicles for government agencies
-Research grants for alternative fuel and battery technology
-Renovation of national parks, restoration of national monuments, increased care of national cemetaries
-Earmarks for medicare efficiency research projects designed to improve the efficiency of medicare programs in the long term
-Unprecedented transparency and oversight through all public bidding, Inspector Generals, and an all public approval process via recovery.gov
That is all the nice stuff, now list for us all the waste and pork.
$1 billion for Amtrack
$2 billion for childcare subsidies
$50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts??? <--WTF?
$400 million for global warming research <--that will create a lot of jobs
$2.4 BILLION for carbon-capture projects??
$6 billion for mass transit. How does that help stimulate the economy?
$54 billion to federal programs that have been declared 'ineffective' by the OMB
This isn't a stimulus package, it is a Democrat wish list.
A lot of you criticized Bush for taking advantage of 9-11 to push through a bunch of policy ideas that you disagree with.
Now it seems that Obama and the Democrats in congress are taking advantage of the slow economy to push through a bunch of spending that they would not be able to get through during a good economy.