Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues The Obama Administration Stimulus package

Am I "spoiled"? Absolutely!

Yessir, you're spoiled all right. More power to ya!

Again, I gotta agree with Steve.

# Tax credit of up to $400 for individuals, $800 for couples for 2009 and 2010. Figure your individual credit by taking 6.2% of your earned income. Note that your employer can adjust your withholdings so that the credit is returned to you over the year instead of all at once. The Associated Press says most people will see this in the form of a $13 bump in weekly paychecks starting in June, and dropping to about $7.70 a week for the duration of 2010.
# The $1000 child tax credit will be extended to more families, and if you're a poor family with three or more kids, you'll get an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit.
# No tax on the first $2400 of unemployment you receive in 2009.
# The government will subsidize up to 65% of your premium for Cobra coverage if you lost your job after Sep 1st, 2008. If you declined Cobra, you'll have 60 days to reconsider.
# $87 billion is going to help states administer Medicaid, which the AP notes "could slow or reverse some of the steps states have taken to cut the program."

what the stimulus bill has for everyday Americans

My daughter sent us this article. Thought it might be of interest to you.

By "we" would you mean "the Republican Administration that wrote the Bill"?

Well, the shoe is on the other foot. Your President, your House, your Senate, spending our money faster than any Republican Congress ever did.

The $3 trillion Bush's proposes spending in 2009 would be the first time that milestone has been reached. Bush also presided over the first budget to hit $2 trillion, in 2002. It took the government nearly 200 years to reach the first $1 trillion budget, which occurred in 1987 during the

Reagan administration.

Olyve...doesn't look like anybody needs to plan any trips to Vegas to celebrate their new wealth created out the tax breaks. $13 won't pay for the shuttle from the Airport to the Strip.

Woe is us!

Joe Conason, The New York Observer

Not only did the president win the debate over his bill, but he also rebutted the Republican argument for mostly tax cuts instead of spending, according to Gallup’s Feb. 9 poll. By 50 percent to 42 percent, most Americans believe that government spending will do more to spur economic growth than tax cuts—a stunning repudiation of conservative ideology. Although Republicans tend to prefer tax cuts by wide margins, Democrats remain convinced that spending works better and, ominously for the right, so do independents, by a margin of 50 percent to 36 percent.

The Republicans slapped themselves on the back for denying the president a single vote in the House of Representatives, but the basic fact is that they could not come close to sustaining a Senate filibuster against this bill. Underlying that reality is the emptiness of their fiscal rhetoric and the paucity of their ideas. In major states such as Florida and California, their own GOP governors have spoken out in favor of the stimulus because the party has no program beyond tax cuts for the wealthy.

So the approval ratings of the Republican Party and the congressional minority declined during this struggle, while the ratings of the Democrats and the congressional leadership improved, despite their uneven performance. Those numbers should bolster the determination of the president and his party to push ahead—and to push back when they meet obstruction, as they inevitably will.
Source

To all the naysayers on this issue, would you please recall what then Pres. Bush was saying about the economy a short ten months ago? Had he acted in a responsible way then, none of this would have come to pass.