Ben Nelson seems quite content playing the fool. Via Ezra Klein at American Prospect: $800 billion, I joked, was calculated using the famed Nelson output theorem, which is not at all reliant on symbolism or a preference for achievable round numbers. Rather, it’s reliant on old-fashioned Nebraska values. The joke, it turns out, is on […]
from the Center for American Progress: The consequences of this lower job creation go beyond the immediate impact of the recovery plan to the labor market. The recovery and reinvestment legislation as passed by the House was designed not just to create jobs through spending but also to put the economy on an upward trajectory […]
from yesterday: What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses? A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus […]
from the Lincoln Journal Star The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated in March ’08 that it would cost $4.4 trillion to extend Bush’s tax cuts and AMT relief — only part of DeMint’s proposal — through 2018.
from Swampland: Meanwhile, Ben Nelson is out gutting the stimulus of the most stimulative spending. So if you’re on that green curve up there, don’t worry — there might not be enough money for food stamps or unemployment insurance, but you’ll get a nice fat tax break if you want to buy a new house. […]
I’ve decided to change the way I share the rejects, given that so many of the ideas are so outdated by the time I do a year-end countdown. So in order to make sure these rejected sketches are appreciated better closer to their proper temporal context, here begins what I hope will be a monthly […]
Take it away, Steve: “This is not a stimulus plan, it’s a spending plan,” Nebraska’s freshman senator, Mike Johanns (R), said Wednesday in a maiden floor speech full of budget-balancing orthodoxy that would have made Herbert Hoover proud. The stimulus bill, he declared, “won’t create the promised jobs. It won’t activate our economy.” Johanns was […]
Some of you may have seen me post this on facebook already, but if not, go to Doomkopf.com to check out the Top 5 unusually heavy episodes of 1980s cartoons. To get you started, here’s #5.
In a follow-up from the update in yesterday’s post, it turns out the Ben Nelson gang wants to cut state aid after all, only it’s to the tune of $40 billion, not $25 billion. How direct aid to states with budget problems doesn’t qualify as stimulus to these people is beyond me. Out of one […]
Not that anyone would be surprised, but Mike Johanns voted for Sen. Jim DeMint’s “stimulus” bill, summarized here by David Weigel at the Washington Independent: • Permanently repeal the alternative minimum tax once and for all; • Permanently keep the capital gains and dividends taxes at 15 percent; • Permanently kill the Death Tax for […]