The stimulus package explained

February 9, 10:45 AMSouth St. Paul ExaminerRob Shirk

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Big spending. Big hopes

People are not buying things. Not in South St. Paul, not anywhere.

There's a lot of stuff around but it's just sitting there collecting dust and taking up space. You just lost your job because no one's buying things like houses, for gosh sakes and you're the guy making windows for homes. Now there's even less money for you to buy stuff. It's just killing businesses and they're laying off people like crazy. Unemployment has gone through the roof and now your neighbor got the axe and there's less money to spend...and it goes on from there. Supply and demand. Lots of supply. Not much demand.

Valentine's Day goes by the board. Along with Lincoln's Birthday.

The stimulus bill is a long list of spending programs from Washington. The way to create jobs quickly is through spending, which nobody is doing. That's the problem. It takes money to make money.

The money is borrowed by the Federal government from private citizens (through gov. bonds), financial corporations and other countries. The loan is made on the good credit of the US government with the promise that it will eventually be paid back by the US taxpayer. Meanwhile the owed money piles up in a figure we call the "National Debt".

The way to get the jobs and save the jobs is to spend money on programs so people can get their jobs and income back.  Then they can spend money. The businesses can "be back in business". It is big government spending. That is what a stimulus package is, for gosh sakes. It is government helping we, the people, get out of the worst economic disaster since The Depression. There is no time to waste. It is an emergency.

Then you get the argument that this is not a stimulus bill, it is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? That's the whole point! -- Barack Obama

The Republican response has been spending along with tax cuts. Barack Obama's stimulus package has already been watered down to a 58-42 per cent spending to tax cut that compromises its ability to actually work at all. Tax cuts provide less stimulus than spending, by a country mile. The 42 per cent tax cut that was compromised will do nothing to help stimulate the economy. It will hinder the president's plan to save it.

Minnesota's Governor Tim Pawlenty, South St. Paul's wunderkind, drapes the "tax cut-no new taxes", philosophy upon his shoulders with the help of The Taxpayer League of Minnesota. He will take the federal dollars trying to save Minnesota in the stimulus bill but will not carry it one step further down to the state or local level. The duplicity is unmistakable.

Thanks a million to Karen Harper, the erudite Birmingham Progressive Politics Examiner, who has the full eight minute Rachel Maddow video available which offers a more detailed overview than this space allows. I have used Maddow's video essay extensively.

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