Senate Conservatives Propose $3.1 Trillion ‘Stimulus Plan,’ Three Times More Costly Than Obama’s Plan
Senate Conservatives Propose $3.1 Trillion ‘Stimulus Plan,’ Three Times More Costly Than Obama’s Plan
In a press conference this morning, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) discussed his objections to President Obama’s stimulus package currently before the Senate. McConnell expressed his concerns over the long term cost of the plan, because “we are already looking at, before we even do this, at over a trillion dollar deficit for this year”:
Most of my members believe that we could pass a very robust stimulus for less than the amount currently before us. We have been throwing figures around like it was paper money. We are already looking at, before we even do this, at over a trillion dollar deficit for this year. We all agree that we need to do something, but I don’t think we should not just completely act like the amount is irrelevant.
Watch it:
McConnell is not alone in trotting out this argument. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has also railed against increasing the deficit to pay for measures that won’t act as effective economic stimulus, saying that the current stimulus plan is “arrogantly indifferent to economic reality.”
The only comprehensive alternative being offered by Senate conservatives is DeMint’s “American Option: A Jobs Plan That Works,” a series of permanent tax breaks for corporations and wealthy Americans. A new analysis from the Center for American Progress Action Fund finds that the DeMint plan would cost over $3.1 trillion over ten years — more than three times the amount of President Barack Obama’s plan — and be largely ineffective at creating jobs.
The DeMint plan includes permanently cutting the corporate tax rate, totally eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax, lowering income tax rates for the wealthiest Americans, and eliminating scores of tax deductions that help students pay for college, sick families pay medical bills, and teachers purchase supplies for their classrooms.
Permanent tax cuts are one of the least effective ways of stimulating the economy according to both Moody’s Economy.com and the Congressional Budget Office. Furthermore, slashing government revenues this permanently would leave deep structural deficits for generations to come.
McConnell is fond of saying that a stimulus bill should be “timely, temporary, and targeted.” The plan Senate Republicans are backing, though, fulfills none of these criteria.
16 Responses to “Senate Conservatives Propose $3.1 Trillion ‘Stimulus Plan,’ Three Times More Costly Than Obama’s Plan”
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Wait, you’re suggesting that the Republican plan for more of Bush’s tax cuts will be incredibly costly and incredibly ineffective?
Wow, it’s almost like the Republican focus on stuff like re-planting the mall, birth control for poor women, and replacement federal cars–less than 1 percent of the spending bill–was just a HUGE red herring!
It’s like they have NO SOLUTIONS, so they just go on TV and exaggerate, grandstand and downright lie (CBO report, anyone?). Rather than, you know, come clean on the fact that their solutions are a more costly version of the same stuff that got us into this mess.
Ugh.
February 2nd, 2009 at 12:50 pmSame old, same old. That is so stupid and Republicans want us
to think they’re smart people.
This is the legacy of the 1994 “Contract With America” which
many people called, more accurately, a “Contract ON America”.
Rethugliconscum are trying to destroy our country.
BRING ON 2010! EVERYBODY VOTE DEMOCRAT!
February 2nd, 2009 at 12:59 pmThe Bush Admin had 7 of the 8 highest deficits in history; he was topped once by his daddy. Now the Republicans start pretending to be fiscally responsible?!!?
February 2nd, 2009 at 2:39 pmThe Republicans will fillibuster any policy that doesn’t continue their trickle down policies. They have been dismantling organized labor, and domestic producers of goods and services for 20 years through their “lazY unFair” unfree market trade policies. They have divided the country based on class, race, religon and region for decades thereby dividing and diminishing the political capital of working class Americans. They label anyone who desires a strong and prosperous domestic population a socialist, while effectively turning this country into a plutocracy beneath our noses. This country in Governed by We the People, not the Corporations which require the people the consume and produce. Don’t buy the myth that Corporation will move offshore, they were never here for the low tax rates, they were here for the consumer spending power, which the Grand Obstructionist Party has nearly sapped dry.
We are needed more than ever, continue to reach out and network, forward any information you find online which reveals the GOPs’s record of failures, or dismantles the propaganda and revisionism that they are using now to re-brand the party.
We must defeat the Grand Obstructionist Party in 2012, because they have not gotten the message, 60 democratic senate seats will change this country, this President is not beholden to ideology, and he’s intelligent enough to know what he doesn’t know and who to find out from.
Contiued failure is not an option, for this country this is the 2nd Revolution, our time, and our responsibility as Americans
February 2nd, 2009 at 2:53 pmWe must defeat the Grand Obstructionist Party in 2012
February 2nd, 2009 at 2:55 pm“Lower tax rates for Corporations”! The Republican mantra. How many times have you heard that “America has the highest corporate tax rate in the world”! What hogwash. Everyone knows that American corporations pay virtually NO TAXES!! And haven’t for many years. Beginning with Reagan, the tax codes were re-written (the first time, anyway. Many times, later) FOR the corporations. Billions of dollars worth of loop-holes. So, when they whine about our ‘astronomical’ corporate tax rate, it is a game of smoke and mirrors! My husband made 49000. last year and paid $4900 in Income tax. Guess where they have been ‘attempting’ to ‘balance the budget’, while letting corporations off scott free? AND…they lowered taxes on the top earners in the country, that cost us 2 trillion over the last 8 years. AND…spent over a trillion on Iraq!
These Republicans expect the people of this country to listen to them after they have stolen us blind??? Uh…”fool me once, uh…won’t get fooled again”!
February 2nd, 2009 at 4:05 pmI dont think the FEDERAL RESERVE would have a problem loaning us a couple more Trillion. So, what is the problem anyway? Ask a Warberg,or a Rothschild or an Oppenheimer. Their loaded OH hail the money trust (just get down on your knees peasants)Mcconnell is a marble-mouth hillbilly.
February 2nd, 2009 at 6:10 pmThose damn Republicans! I call them “Nero Republicans” because they fiddle while the nation burns.
The have some twisted sense of ideological fervor – they are now against deficits!!! Where were they for the Bush 8 years!!!!!!!
They all have secure jobs, good salaries, great benefits, government health care, and guaranteed retirement plans. They simply do NOT feel the pain of the ordinary citizen. They want to keep up this fiction of the “free market” when it is anything but free to most Americans. I think we should not send any recovery money to any legislative district whose representative voted against the Obama plan. Then we will see what democracy looks like!
February 2nd, 2009 at 6:11 pmNice misleading post Ben. You failed to mention to all the readers who are unaware that the Center for American Progress (CAP) is a liberal think-tank that has put almost their entire staff into the Obama administration.
What an amazing coincidence that CAP (ie: the Obama administration) found that the competing plan is supposedly terrible? Notice the distinction in the findings between “stimulating” and “growing” the economy (which is what tax cuts do in the long run). Also, that the findings incorrectly assume that most corporations pay corporate income tax (they don’t due to preferences – they only pay AMT at the lower 20% rate). Not to mention the whole corporate tax integration arguments.
So, again, questionable findings by the Obama Administration (commonly known as CAP)
February 2nd, 2009 at 7:03 pm“Nice misleading post Ben. You failed to mention to all the readers who are unaware that the Center for American Progress (CAP) is a liberal think-tank that has put almost their entire staff into the Obama administration.”
dear Jeff…kind of like the Heritage Society running wild in the Bush White House for the last 8 years…your silence then was deafening.
February 2nd, 2009 at 7:44 pmUsing the Bush model, these idiots have quite a platform (to fall through).
February 2nd, 2009 at 10:53 pmOnly liberals concieve of tax cuts as a “cost.” Allowing people to keep more of their own money to spend or save as they see fit (including to start businesses and hire workers) is not a cost. Tax cuts sometimes increase revenue to the Treasury; sometimes they do not. Liberals oppose tax cuts not because of any estimated budgetary impact, but because such cuts afford them less control over the lives of others. And THAT prospect cannot be countenanced by the current administration.
February 3rd, 2009 at 3:33 pmLet’s face it. Republicans are just paid lackeys for their wealthy special interests and pet single-issue grassroots movements.
But so are the Democrats. What’s worse about us is we are so interested in pointing out tax-cuts for the rich and spending for pork like Iraq and Afghanistan, that the same puppetmasters have picked up our strings, too.
There is no free market, yet we’re told by Democratic Senators, Representatives and Cabinet members (White House occupants NOT excluded) that the “buy American” provision will “risk setting off a trade war!”
Wake up people! The superrich have bought everybody in Washington, in the media, and in the military-industrial complex.
We need big income tax increases on the top 10% and
We need the resignations of everybody in Congress who accept campaign contributions from unnatural entities, such as corporations and Political Action Committees.
Free the American people!
February 4th, 2009 at 4:42 pmActually, Reality, that is exactly the OPPOSITE reason of why what you call “liberals” oppose tax cuts.
Tax revenues are the only pooling of their economic resources that enables the common people to enjoy the quality of life we need to have progress, like wiping out diseases, creating sanitation and clean water systems so you and your children don’t die of malaria, educating the common people, creating broadband networks that provide for free speech instead of monopoly brainwashing.
It’s the freedom to cooperate with one another, without serving the demands of a tyrant, a feudal lord or a fascist dictator, that is enshrined in the foundational belief of democratic self-government, in our case, through duly elected Representatives.
Open your eyes! The tax cuts are just a way to impoverish and disenfranchise the people, the free people, of the United States and turn them into the lackeys of tyrants and feudal lords!
February 4th, 2009 at 4:49 pmI realize this post is rather late, I only learned of this post a couple hours ago, but I just had to answer Jeff:
Hey Jeff! WOW! What a dazzling revelation! “(CAP) is a liberal think-tank that has put almost their entire staff into the Obama administration.” Oh man, am I glad you told us THAT because I’m sure all of us would have remained in total ignorance without you having posted it here. Heck, I’ll bet you can’t find that information anywhere else!
Which of course raises the obvious questions: Exactly WHO at CAP wound up in the Obama administration? Can you give specific names (first and last PLEASE), their titles at CAP, and the positions they now occupy in the Obama administration?
And for that matter, can you tell us just where you found this fascinating piece of information, so we can look it up and verify it for ourselves? I mean, I can’t just go around informing my friends, telling them this is true just “because Jeff said so.”
February 4th, 2009 at 9:38 pmI have a question about the graph and the projected cost that seems to have escaped everyone. The DeMint plan is projected to cost 3.1 trillion over the next ten years and placed on the graph. The current stimulus plan is placed on the graph listed at what the cost will be the first day.
So what kind of figure did they come up with for the long term cost of the Stimulus bill? Why is it not listed? What is the cost of the DeMint plan today? Why is it not listed?
February 13th, 2009 at 11:38 am