Nancy Pelosi is a grade A moron.

[godsshoeshine]

this whole thing has made the republican party look weak. the country is in deep fiscal trouble and all they do is cry about proceedure and semantics, but yet their govenors will indeed take the money the so vehmently oppose

[Venerable Bede]

this whole thing has made the republican party look weak. the country is in deep fiscal trouble and all they do is cry about proceedure and semantics, but yet their govenors will indeed take the money the so vehmently oppose

i would agree. . .if they had a real backbone they'd step up and argue that this whole stimulus package is unnecessary to begin with....they only got so far by arguing it's a waste of money (which it is), full of wasteful spending (which it is) and won't accomplish the goals put forward by the administration (and it won't).  i mean, only 36% of the public voiced any sort of support for the thing as of this weekend. . .

as for the governors, well, being a governor versus being a member of congress entails far different responsibilities . . .also, unlike the federal government, states are required to have a balanced budget and can't run a deficit, not to mention that states already rely on federal funding for a large percentage of their overall funding.   

as bernanke once said- a more effective stimulus would be to simply drop money from a helicopter.   if the federal government wants to give away $787 billion, split it up by population and just hand it over to the governors and let them decide how to spend the money, not congress.

[Herr Professor Doktor Doom]

It's a necessary bill.  One could quibble with the details -- way too much money in tax cuts versus additional money to the states in a foolhardy effort to "reach across the aisle" to the Rush-publicans.  And not enough money to seriously develop a new energy paradigm.   But it's a huge, historic start and hopefully will help us to avoid a dangerous deflationary spiral.

[Venerable Bede]

It's a necessary bill.  One could quibble with the details -- way too much money in tax cuts versus additional money to the states in a foolhardy effort to "reach across the aisle" to the Rush-publicans.  And not enough money to seriously develop a new energy paradigm.   But it's a huge, historic start and hopefully will help us to avoid a dangerous deflationary spiral.

if you're a keynsian, this isn't enough money, if you follow hayek, this is a foolish attempt by the government to exert its control over something inherently uncontrollable. . .

the tax cuts in this waste is simply foolish and won't do anything (gee, thanks. . .$13 more a month) (i should also note that i thought those stimulus rebates of previous years were a waste of time and money as well). . .there is way too much spending on non-stimulus programs in the bill.  if you want to print your way to increasing federal/state spending, then infrastructure projects would be the way to go; unfortunately, infrastructure spending is well less than 50% of the spending part of the bill and will take several years to show up in the economy.  instead, we get language that starts to unravel welfare reform, makes attempts at protectionism and other pet projects of the democrats.

[Arthwys]

Venerable is now my hero.  Keep fighting the good fight!