"Stimulus" Bill Passes House, All Republicans and 11 Democrats Oppose
The Club for Growth reports:
Zero Republicans Vote for Stimulus
The House passed the trillion dollar stimulus package last night with ZERO Republicans voting for it. In fact, there was bipartisan opposition to the plan with 11 Democrats voting NO as well.
Much like the Clinton tax hike of 1993, the Democrats now "own" this massive spending bill.
Additionally, eleven Democrats voted against it. From Politico:
Here's a list of the House Democrats who voted against the economic stimulus. The bill passed on a 244-188 vote.
Allen Boyd (FL),
Bobby Bright (Ala.)
Jim Cooper (Tenn),
Brad Ellsworth (Ind.)
Parker Griffith (Ala.)
Paul Kanjorski (Pa)
Frank Kratovil (Md)
Walt Minnick (Idaho)
Collin Peterson (Minn.)
Heath Shuler (N.C.)
Gene Taylor (Miss,)
(Neither of Kentucky's "fiscal hawk" blue-dog dems on this list...)
On Monday, the Club for Growth described the job-destroying effects of the stimulus package:
The billions of dollars in projects contained in the stimulus bill must come from someplace. It doesn’t grow on trees, and it won’t materialize out of thin air. This money comes straight out of the private sector where it would be spent far more efficiently than anything the government will attempt. Already we are seeing the inefficiency and waste that plagues the government spending process—with pork projects being slipped in by the thousands.
“After months of promising ‘change,’ the pork-filled stimulus bill looks like business-as-usual on steroids,” said Club for Growth President Pat Toomey. “Can anyone really argue that spending money on a water park in Miami and a beach in New Jersey will stimulate the economy?”
Read the rest here.
Want to know what else is in the bill? The Wall Street Journal reports that it is a 40-year wish-list of pent up liberal favorites:
This is a political wonder that manages to spend money on just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years.
We've looked it over, and even we can't quite believe it. There's $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn't turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There's even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.
In selling the plan, President Obama has said this bill will make "dramatic investments to revive our flagging economy." Well, you be the judge. Some $30 billion, or less than 5% of the spending in the bill, is for fixing bridges or other highway projects. There's another $40 billion for broadband and electric grid development, airports and clean water projects that are arguably worthwhile priorities.
Add the roughly $20 billion for business tax cuts, and by our estimate only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus.
So in fact, the bill is a massive reapportionment of federal outlays (graphs) over five years that is more likely to crowd out entrepreneurship than create immediate commerce.
