Bloomberg Dismisses Stimulus Package

WASHINGTON — New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday the White House and Congress are negotiating a shortsighted economic stimulus package and should focus instead on encouraging immigration and helping strapped homeowners.

"We can't borrow our way out of this. The jig is up," Bloomberg said during a speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which honored his environmental efforts.

The billionaire mayor, who is said to be considering an independent presidential bid yet denies that he is a candidate, said the $150 billion stimulus package being hammered out between Democratic and Republican leaders won't be enough.

"There's just one problem: It's not going to make much of a difference because we've already been running huge deficits," Bloomberg said. "If we spend all the money right now, and there is no recovery because of it, then we don't have a second hand to play."

Some of those urging Bloomberg to run for president say his record as a CEO is his biggest selling point in a time of economic turmoil.

Despite his public denials of presidential ambitions, Bloomberg is conducting an analysis of voter data in all 50 states to better understand his chances as a third-party candidate. Aides have said he would delay a decision until after the major parties produce clear front-runners.

For months, Bloomberg has faulted the two parties for failing to reach practical compromises. His speech Wednesday night on the economy was unusual in that he publicly opposed the one area where there is wide bipartisan agreement: the economic stimulus package.

The metropolitan mayor used a farming analogy to heap scorn on the current crop of Washington leaders.

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"They spent most of this past decade when things were good running up bills with reckless abandon, and when the economy started heading for the ditch, the special interest giveaways got even bigger. I think they ate the seed corn without worrying about the next year's crop. Here we are, the seed corn is gone, and all we've got is a barn full of IOU's," he said.

Details of the stimulus package are still being negotiated, but the centerpiece of the measure is expected to be a tax rebate similar to the $300-$600 checks sent out in the summer of 2001. The emergency measure would more than double last year's deficit spending of $163 billion, according to congressional budget estimates.

Bloomberg argued that the government's first goal should be to stop the bleeding in the housing sector. "What good is a rebate going to do for a family who's about to lose the place that they sleep in?" he said. Keeping people in their homes, he added, "is more important than giving everyone a check."

Instead, the mayor argued, the government should:

_ Adopt a capital budget to oversee long-term infrastructure spending, instead of the current year-to-year spending.

_ Offer financial counseling, modified loans and, in some cases, subsidized loans to homeowners who find themselves unable to afford their mortgages.

_Overhaul immigration laws to bring more workers in, not keep workers out.

"Illegal immigration has become the pandering politician's best friend," he said. "We have to stop turning away people that our economy needs."

Comments

[nomoredead]

Raise the tax on Hedge Funds from 15%....
Tax churches..­..
A tariff on imported items....
Stop the healthcare greed....
Give the working man a F******* tax break....
Start some infrastructure rebuilding­.....
Start some homeless shelter building ( we are going to need it).....
No off shore corporations avoiding taxes....
Stop the wealthy tax loopholes.­..
Close useless military bases around the world....

[OhgReaTone]

Bloomberg is correct. Lowering interest rates so people can borrow more only prolongs the agony. We have become a nation of debt - and it is time to pay up.
Ohg
http://thefiresidepost.com/2008/01/18/debtor-nation-and-deregulation-of-banking/

[dgscol]

Down with stimulus package and up with keeping illegals out. Mike, get a grip and stand up like a man.

[anfractuous]

Does he propose any remedy for his Wall Street pals' vampiric plundering of the economy - that leaves everyone else thrashing hopelessly in its wake? No, I didn't think so.

[Tom95134]

Finally, someone that is willing to say, "The Emperor Has No Clothes!"

There is NOTHING under what Bush and Congress are proposing.

There is NO PLAN to restore the economic health of the United States. Bush is full of shit when he talks about a strong economy because it is all based on debt and is an illusion. Bush and Congress think they can fix it by throwing more "tax cuts and rebates" at the problem. Sorry, but it won't work this time.

Where do you find an FDR and a new "New Deal" when you need one?

[mrcontinental]

People just don't seem to get it. There is NOTHING that can be done to fix this mess. It would involve abolishing the FED and running all of the elected lawyers out of D.C. and we all know that's never going to happen. The system is totally corrupt and cannot be salvaged; no matter who you stick in the white house.

A nation is a living breathing thing and once it's been poisioned nearly to death there is no going back. The cancer is terminal so say your goodbye's now while you still have the chance because this once great nation is most assuredly on life support with no possible chance of recovery. The chance to medicate and reverse the damage passed seven years ago and now the cancer has spread throughout the entire host and will consume everything in it's path.

There will be no miracles folks. I applaud your optimism but you all are fooling yourselves just as the neocons and evangelicals are. It's too late.

[OpusIsUnderTheBed]

We should not argue with what Bloomberg says. It's merely true.

We ought to be ashamed, and many of us are. We were the biggest, proudest nation, but we're not held in much regard by other nations now.

We've spent all our money. We've spent our kid's money. Our kid's kids will pay for our laziness.

We can't feed all of our people. Can't house them. Can't heal them. Certainly can't educate all of them.

But we still have many things to be proud of. We're the biggest producer in the world, of mind numbing, game/quiz/­reality/ta­lent/amate­ur television programming.

And our elected officials, in office to boost and improve our country, one day at a time? Ineffective, argumentative, stupid, corrupt, and at all times, powerless and too self serving to "do the right thing".

We've lost our will, our spirit, our daring. We've lost the economic battle. We're lowering our standards daily. We're settling for mediocrity and praising it. We're being strangled by failure to address crippling energy issues, address educational and health issues. The g@d@@@@d issues of quality of life and spirit.

We are warring with nations, losing control of nucleur armaments worldwide. Bullying nations and now whining and begging to some.

Our national leaders now propose an economic stimilus package that will not succeed and stops just short of dropping hundred dollar bills by air, over our cities.

We've got an election coming up. Think, as though your life depended on it, of the quality and character, and ability, of the man or woman you choose, for the next 4 or 8 years.

And when they cut us our stimulus checks? Save a dollar to help Bush with his grand library, to himself.

[joja]

Bloomberg's wrong about the immigration fix he proposes.

If there aren't enuf jobs for the people who are already here, where are the jobs for immigrants going to come from?

It just seems to me that importing low-skilled, and even higher-skilled, workers into the system only helps drive the wage-floor down for ALL workers, and only benefits business.

That sounds like Clinton/Bush to me. That's what's causing the problem in the first place!

[mamacat]

Mr. Bloomberg is the first one to say these things, and they need to be said. Long term fixes for our infrastructure, and real solutions for the sub-prime fiasco, are very important. However, talking sense didn't get Ross Perot elected, so why does Mr. Bloomberg think it will get him elected?
Still, it is nice to hear someone talking sense. If nothing else, his contribution to a Presidential debate might help the eventual winner of the election to focus on what is important to the country. It might also be wise and useful to have Mr. Bloomberg as an Independent Party member of the new President's cabinet.
It looks to me like his heart and mind are in the right place. He may not have a ghost of a chance of winning, but I would like to hear more from him anyway.

[StephenBarry]

The balloon is out of air. Inflation is not the worry, re-inflation to normalcy is what we need. We need to end the indentured servitude of tens of millions of american families and increase their wages dramatically to allow consumption to make up for a dearth of investment and to allow increased savings and debt take downs to provide more resources to get investment up. One way to do that is to have the Fed, Treasury and the Congress apply pressure on credit card companies and unsecured loan companies to slash their extortionate rates to better correspond with market reality and give the indentured consumer some slack. Also, we need a law to prevent inherent conflicts of interest at the top. How can a nation so dependent on oil have oilmen at the helm ?! This is a recipe for disaster. Without Bush / Cheney the federal government could easily put a solar panel on every roof in America and smash the dominance of big oil and the OPEC cartel. It might also save us from extinction as well. God forbid the indentured public did'nt have to feed the beast every month when the pointless oil / gas utility bill needs to be paid. Why are the capitalists so afraid of freeing the public ? The public won't bite. If you don't free them though, they may. We are less a democracy than a nation 'of the coporations, by the corporations, for the corporations'.

[joebaggadonuts]

He may not have the right solution, but at least Bloomberg is making people notice that the man behind the curtain still has a problem that is being visited upon us.

[Justinpassing]

OK Bloomberg, instead of calling yours a band-aid plan, we'll call it a crazy-glue plan. It still does not address the structural problem at the heart of this Nations tail-spin and that structural problem is feckless leadership from wall street to pennsylvania ave to corporate street. The only remedy for that structural problem is Dennis Kucinich, but you have to be able to know truth when you see it.

[Novista]

Fix THE problem?

Would you like to start with 1913? Or 1916, when an isolationist president was campaigning for re-election on the isolationist platform of " keeping Americans out of a European war"? Even as his 'brain' Col. House was signing a secret treaty with the British to get the U.S. into WW1?

(ref. then Sec. of State William Jennings Bryan's Memoirs, vol 2.)

1920? Aftermath of war expense, when the Fed lowered the interest rate, as part of an agreement to prop up the British pound. Of which Greenspan wrote in 1966, excess liquidity in the stock market led to irrational exuberance. So if he knew that then, why not at the start of this decade? Bubbles burst, and some profit ...

Ask yourself how a a country 12 years into depression­/recession (1938) can suddenly spend 40% of GDP on a war. Yamamoto was right: "We have awakened a sleeping giant."

And THAT was the start of the MIC. It never got smaller!

1971. Nixon trashes Bretton Woods and breaks the final bond to gold. Float the dollar. And now watch it sink. Well, oil kept it afloat for a long time, but nothing lasts forever!

Factor in outsourcing, offshoring, trade imbanance, one trillion dollars over 36 years on a War of Drugs that is seemingly never won. Add a useless war expense with "no end in sight" and please tell me what THE problem is?!

[Bagger]

Sign the petition today! Bloomberg for president!

http://www.draftbloomberg.com/

[SharonWantsToTalk]

We cannot flood our employment markets with cheap labor. It only drags down the wage of everyone else. Americans WILL do those jobs if you pay them a livable wage. I clean at a local University and my husband works in a stone quarry. We do ok for our part of the country. But, our local economy has a small percentage of immigrant workers. If we were to experience an influx of workers willing to do our jobs for substantially less, our wages would decrease, as well as our standard of living. The argument of more workers is counterproductive to our struggling economy. Changing the wage and job structure of existing employment is more conducive to a sustainable economy