THIS is from HuffPost, click the header to go to the article to see just where some of the stimulus money has gone, to boost the economy and put people back to work...
Republican leaders insist, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that President Obama's $800-billion-or-so stimulus package from last year hasn't accomplished anything. (This is driving top White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein absolutely crazy.)
Progressive groups -- and most leading economists -- say the problem with the stimulus was that it didn't do enough, because it wasn't nearly as big as it should have been.
Lost amid those arguments is what exactly the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did accomplish -- which, by comparison to almost anything except the massive output gap it was supposed to fill, is a lot.
On Tuesday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the act added between 1.4 million to 3.3 million during the second quarter of 2010.
In addition to $288 billion in tax cuts, the Recovery Act funded all sorts of worthy projects that created jobs, backstopped a number of safety-net programs, and made huge investments in infrastructure, energy independence, mass transit and other public goods.
Here are 11 projects that got stimulus money. Do you think they deserved your tax money?
BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label Jared Bernstein. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jared Bernstein. Show all posts
19 August 2010
Jared Bernstein, White House Economist, Throws Cold Water On Bush Tax Cuts Compromise 17AUG10
This is a perfect example of what Arrianna Huffington wrote in her post (previous post on this blog Memo To America's Working Class; Obama's Just Not That Into You), and it is up to working America, middle class America, and unemployed America to make sure the bush era tax cuts for the wealthy expire as scheduled. After all, I don't see any evidence of these tax cuts creating any jobs here in the U.S., do you????
A key member of the White House economic team is throwing cold water on a leading compromise proposal in the debate over the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.
In a sit-down with the Huffington Post on Monday, Jared Bernstein, Vice President Joseph Biden's chief economist, expressed skepticism with a plan to "phase out" the tax cuts for the wealthy as opposed to simply allowing those tax cuts to expire (as scheduled) later this year.
"There are many good reasons not to extend the high-end parts of the Bush tax cuts having to do with the fear that a temporary extension could be made permanent," Bernstein said. "What you are talking about -- a $30 to 40 billion range in terms of adding to the deficit by extending the high end -- could easily become $700 billion over a ten-year budget window."
"I think the phase out suffers from that vulnerability," he went on. "You are exposing yourself to the risk that it could be made permanent. The president, [Treasury Secretary] Tim Geithner have been very articulate on this point. If you wanted to, and we do, provide more help to the economy that is about the worst way you could do it. Those folks tend not to be liquidity constrained and therefore the kinds of multipliers associated with that type of spending are the lowest. So it simply is not good stimulus policy and it is not good budget policy."
The comments from Bernstein were offered, in part, as a response to a proposal suggested by Moody's economist Mark Zandi. A former adviser to Sen. John McCain who has increasingly become a philosophical ally of President Obama, Zandi has suggested that an abrupt increase in the tax rates on those making over $200,000 a year would have a freezing effect on job creation and economic recovery. Simply not raising the rates, however, would blow a massive hole in the federal budget. As a compromise, Zandi argues, the government should gradually reinstate the higher tax rates over the course of several years.
The White House has favored letting the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy expire as they are set to do under the law. But administration officials haven't been pressed about the middle-ground proposal. Bernstein's comments are the closest that White House aides have come to fully rejecting the idea and they portend an even more dramatic and heated political fight once the issue of the Bush tax cuts re-emerges following Congress' August recess.
A key member of the White House economic team is throwing cold water on a leading compromise proposal in the debate over the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.
In a sit-down with the Huffington Post on Monday, Jared Bernstein, Vice President Joseph Biden's chief economist, expressed skepticism with a plan to "phase out" the tax cuts for the wealthy as opposed to simply allowing those tax cuts to expire (as scheduled) later this year.
"There are many good reasons not to extend the high-end parts of the Bush tax cuts having to do with the fear that a temporary extension could be made permanent," Bernstein said. "What you are talking about -- a $30 to 40 billion range in terms of adding to the deficit by extending the high end -- could easily become $700 billion over a ten-year budget window."
"I think the phase out suffers from that vulnerability," he went on. "You are exposing yourself to the risk that it could be made permanent. The president, [Treasury Secretary] Tim Geithner have been very articulate on this point. If you wanted to, and we do, provide more help to the economy that is about the worst way you could do it. Those folks tend not to be liquidity constrained and therefore the kinds of multipliers associated with that type of spending are the lowest. So it simply is not good stimulus policy and it is not good budget policy."
The comments from Bernstein were offered, in part, as a response to a proposal suggested by Moody's economist Mark Zandi. A former adviser to Sen. John McCain who has increasingly become a philosophical ally of President Obama, Zandi has suggested that an abrupt increase in the tax rates on those making over $200,000 a year would have a freezing effect on job creation and economic recovery. Simply not raising the rates, however, would blow a massive hole in the federal budget. As a compromise, Zandi argues, the government should gradually reinstate the higher tax rates over the course of several years.
The White House has favored letting the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy expire as they are set to do under the law. But administration officials haven't been pressed about the middle-ground proposal. Bernstein's comments are the closest that White House aides have come to fully rejecting the idea and they portend an even more dramatic and heated political fight once the issue of the Bush tax cuts re-emerges following Congress' August recess.
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