It may not be 'political' to openly say so, however, the United States has barely enough heft to lift its own boat; to expect it to lift those of all nations, of the global economy, is a noble thought but completely unrealistic. All nations will have to do their share for the worldwide bailout. And the plain truth is that there is a great difference between the two main parts of the stimulus package in terms of where the funds end up. The money granted to banks and to taxpayers (the part the Republicans want to increase) can flow any old place. The banks can lend money to corporations that open plants overseas and outsource jobs, or they can simply invest in other nations' economies. The same holds when taxpayers buy goodies with the money they are allotted.
In contrast, funds allotted to making America greener, shoring up the crumbling infrastructure, improving the education of Americans, and developing new technologies at home -- the part the Democrats are trying to protect from Republicans -- all initially help the U.S. economy (other nations will benefit in turn). Funds dedicated to fixing a bridge in Minnesota, to the electrical grid that serves the nation from coast to coast, or to local schools from New York to Los Angeles -- will not end up in China, India, or any other place.
One may say that all nations are throwing money into the bailout pot, and we should add ours, making for the needed grand global stimulus. However, other nations are dragging their feet. Germany finally decided to cough up some money, but far from enough. China is focusing on protecting its economy by manipulating its currency, and so it goes in other nations. Until they are willing to do their share -- given the precarious condition of the U.S. economy and its already over-stretched commitments and shortage of funds -- the Obama administration is right to lift our boat first. That is, rail against even larger tax cuts, and support investment in America's future.
Amitai Etzioni is a University Professor at The George Washington University, and the author of The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics. He can be reached at icps@gwu.edu
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Senate Stimulus Bill (Full Text)
Updated on February 8 The pdf is now available. * * * * * Updated on February 8 The compromise Senate stimulus bill has been...
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Obama says differences shouldn't delay stimulus
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Monday that "very modest differences" over a massive package to revive the economy should not delay its swift passage,...
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Obama White House Losing Patience On Stimulus
Underscoring the reality that GOP opposition to the stimulus seems firmly entrenched, the Obama administration mounted a more aggressive stance in favor of the recovery...
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STD Money, Recovery.gov, The Patriot Act: HuffPost Readers Dig Through The Stimulus
More money to battle STDs. Recovery.gov stripped out. A nod to the Patriot Act. Huffington Post readers have taken a preliminary look at the Senate...
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Top Dem Senator: "Hundreds Of Billions More" Needed For Bank Bailouts
Sen. Kent Conrad, chairman of the Budget Committee, warned Monday that the financial sector would need "hundreds of billions more" in federal dollars before the...
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Senate Looks To Boost Mass Transit, Highway In Stimulus
WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Tuesday to give a tax break to new car buyers, setting aside bipartisan concerns over the size of an economic...
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Where Is The Stimulus Shock And Awe?
During a November 25 press conference, then President-elect Obama promised "a new spirit of ingenuity," declaring that the "old ways of Washington simply can't meet...
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Stimulus, Yes; Bank Bailout II, No
If Obama does his job he will mobilize public opinion and isolate Republicans who would rather sink the economy than give a Democratic president legislative success.
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Economic Stimulus: Investing in Vets Delivers a Huge Bang for the Buck
As the Senate begins to debate the stimulus package this week, our elected leaders must ensure that any plan fully supports the newest generation of veterans and their families.
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Bipartisanship Fetishism vs. What's Best for America: Obama Needs to Choose
At tonight's press conference, CBS's Chip Reid asked President Obama about whether, given the lack of bipartisanship on the stimulus bill, the White House was "moving away" from its "emphasis on bipartisanship?" Obama replied that his "bottom line when it comes to the recovery package" is: does it create or save jobs? That's good to hear because the president's actions over the last couple of weeks have left many wondering whether bipartisanship, rather than what's best for America, has been his priority. Perhaps there will come a day when the Venn diagrams of the Republican Party and the national interest actually intersect. But, at the moment, we find ourselves with a GOP whose leaders believe, among other things, that government jobs are not real jobs, and that Obama's stimulus plan is "the socialist way." Hard for bipartisanship to flourish in this kind of atmosphere.
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Billionaire For A Day: A More Entertaining Economic Stimulus Package
Let's do something to capture all Americans attention and by doing so make the economic stimulus package real to all of us: 800 Americans will each win a billion dollars.
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Palin's Facebook Page: Opposes Obama's Stimulus Plan
We learn on Facebook that Palin has "serious concerns" with Obama's stimulus package. Say what?
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Just imagine: What if McCain Had Won the Election and Obama had Shafted him During the Stimulus Debate?
Um, are McCain's feelings after losing an election the big question on people's minds in the nation? I think the stimulus package is the focus of the country right now, don't you?
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Stimulate Me!
Experts seem relatively unified, if such a thing is possible, on the issue of direct economic stimulus to every taxpayer. They're against it.
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Where's Ross Perot When You Need Him?
I'm ready for a little old fashioned Ross Perot specification of the expected outcomes of the stimulus package. This is what we call in education a "teachable moment."
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Rahm Throws Pelosi Under The Bus To Save Stimulus Bill
The story of the morning seems to be that the Obama team is unhappy with Nancy Pelosi and the House committee chairs for delivering up such a liberal, pork-laden bill that they themselves really had nothing to do with.
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Our Twin Crises
That we are unable to manage a functioning economy or deal with climate change because rapacious Wall Street traders have disproportionate political clout is a measure of our political dysfunction.
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Creating Jobs Is Not "Wasteful"
America voted for a change of direction last November, not more of the same. Republicans should listen to the American people and work in a bi-partisan fashion to help get our country on the road to recovery.
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Oh, About That "End" of the Obama Honeymoon ...
Where Obama may have made a mistake is in being too substantively accommodating with people who are basically not going to support him except in the event of an extraterrestrial invasion.
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Patriotic Extortion
Imagine if the Democrats had not pre-capitulated to the Republicans on the stimulus bill. Imagine if they had forced the Republicans to actually mount a filibuster.
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Steele Crazy After All This Year
We are witnessing, not so much the collapse of the Republican Party, as its slide into insanity. What was the GOP's great accomplishment last week? A show of "unity" enough to block the first stimulus package.
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Command and Control?
At a time when the country is virtually pleading with him to exert command and control, he has yielded that role to congressional partisans that the public doesn't quite know and almost certainly doesn't trust.
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Why the Stimulus is Needed, Part II
Given the decreases in personal consumption expenditures and gross private domestic investment, what are the chances of the consumer spending again or business investing again?
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House vs. Senate Stimulus Bills
Some highlights: The House version would spend $60 billion more on education -- the Senate version adds more than $100 billion for tax cuts to individuals and families.
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A Better Stimulus for the Economy
The problem with our economy is not weak spending, which is just a symptom of our predicament. The root problem is lack of confidence in the future.
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Operation Zero Cred
The GOP with Joe the Plumber on the Hill this week to discuss the economy. They should be summarily shut out of this process -- whether or not the president wants them out.
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Stimulus Package: If You Jump Halfway Across a Chasm You Fall Into the Abyss
If we are going to spend two trillion dollars (and most likely more) trying to deal with the economic crisis, shouldn't we do it right?
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Change vs. Bipartisanship: What Happens When You Throw a Bipartisan Party and Half the Guest List Stays Home?
The problem with a message of bipartisanship is that it makes it very difficult to tell the story of why things are so bad that we need dramatic change.
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Delusional or Just Cynical?
A good example of the "frothing at the mouth" reaction to the stimulus plan is a blog penned by Jonathan Tobin, Executive Editor of Commentary.
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Obama Financial Team to Taxpayers: You'll Get Nothing, and Like It
There's nothing that prevents the public from getting their fair share of any future bank profits appropriate to the high risk investment they are being forced to make.
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No, Seriously: Republicans Don't Get It
Investment in bike paths will not only improve our economy, and take our country in the right direction for the future; it is exactly the kind of investment the American people want.
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Obama's Wake-Up Call
Even as unemployment hits 7.6 percent and shows no signs of slowing any time soon, the GOP is falling over itself to protect the ostentatious privileges and prerogatives of a few financial potentates.
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Selling Stimulus
What the administration needs, and what its senior advisers proved so adept at during the campaign, is a simpler, more compelling, campaign-style message for what this legislation is really about.
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A New Movement
There is a movement to strip billions of dollars from the stimulus bill led by Ben Nelson of Omaha (whose Democratic status is debatable) and Susan Collins (Republican) of Maine.
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Energy Self-Reliance and Our Future
You want my opinion on a stimulus plan? Follow Ohio's example and invest in American energy. All of it.
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Stimulating
As muddled as this economic stage may be -- and all major measures taken in crisis usually are -- it is born of the drive to reconstruct and not profiteer, and that alone is progress to applaud.
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Bipartisanship (is) for Dummies
The idea that we can turn this economy around by caving to the feckless demands of those who screwed it up in the first place is utterly bankrupt.
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Obama: Use This And the Jobs Bill Will Pass With a 100 Vote Margin
Our best salesman is Obama. There is no house or senate member who this president cannot roll over.
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Obama to Speak Monday Night on Stimulus While Rep. Pete Sessions Says Republicans Are the New Taliban
If the media hadn't acted so irresponsibly the past two weeks and President Obama hadn't tried to be so bipartisan, he might not have had to take to the airwaves, but that's not the case anymore.
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Pulling the Wool Over Our Eyes
The American people elected President Obama in record numbers to lead our country in a new direction, if the Republicans aren't willing to join him, the least they can do is get out of his way.
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Our Phone Calls Are Working, Don't Let Up!
If representatives know that's what their constituents want, they will be both more inclined to keep that critical public investment from the House bill, and act with the speed.
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Obama Undermines Jobs Mandate For the Sake of Bipartisanship
Roosevelt had the New Deal, Kennedy had the New Frontier, Johnson had the Great Society, and Obama has...the stimulus plan. An abstract goal with fungible components that valued process above all else.
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Lions Coach Up Steelers on Stimulus Package
How can anyone take the GOP seriously on economic policy? Agree or disagree on their philosophy; their record is demonstrably terrible. They are the Detroit Lions of Congress.
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Republicans Say They'd Support the "Right" Stimulus Bill, But Stimulus for Them Is Only More Tax Cuts
If you look closely at what the Republicans are saying, this isn't a debate on the merits of this stimulus legislation, but rather another round of policy battles fought during last year's campaign.
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Democrats in Congress Need to Learn How to Lead
I am losing patience with congressional Democrats' innate instinct to capitulate, something that has been evident since the November 2006 mid-term elections.
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GOVERNMENT PROVIDES ME WITH ALL OF MY NEEDS
I STOP WORKING
PRESTO!
This is because (if you don't know) we do not raise enough in taxes to pay our bills. War is off the books and no one knows what it costs.
Yep you and all of your right wing buddies don't want to pay taxes, well guess what... if you're going to take advantage of what little infrastructure is left after the last 8 years, you can either pay your share or move.
"Government doesn't work. " When someone intentionally sets forth to damage the institutions that make government function properly, it can't. If we want a government that truly works as the founders designed, then we... all of us must do what we can to see to it that it works. Taxes are part of our responsibility as citizens.
Because (in theory) our government is by, of and for the people. We are our government.
The government of the people of the United States of America represents its sovereign people, having won our war of independence over two hundred years ago.
A sovereign nation has a right to its OWN money system.
That's kind of the definition of a sovereign country.
The government of this sovereign country turned the right to ownership and operation of our money system over to the private federal reserve banking cartel(system) in 1913.
That same government has the power to take that right back to the people.
That was the recommendation of the Chicago School economists to FDR in 1933 after the Depression proved the private banking system wasn't working.
The government does not need to take every dollar it spends from the people.
If we the people say so, the government has the right to create the nation's money debt-free and issue it directly to American taxpayers and businesses in order to provide a means of exchange in the economy.
It's not a free lunch.
The amount of money created is only equal to what we produce in the economy.
On the other hand, according to the New York Times (Times Topics - Derivatives) the world derivatives market is $531 trillion, with JP Morgan Chase holding some $90 trillion, the most of any bank. (To understand the size of this market, readers should note that the US GDP is $14 trillion, and the total world gross product is about $55 trillion.)
Who can make good on a debt that is ten times the GDP of the entire world? When? By what means? Nothing anybody is going to do can fix this 'system', eaten away from within and now bereft of value.
It is an utopia to think that America can get out of this mess without working
in concert with the rest world and the same goes for the rest of world, there
is no sustainable recovery without America. We are all in the same boat