The Stimulus in chart (left) gives us an intended outlay of funds. This picture chart was for the bill passed in February, 2009.We all know, by now, what has been passed into law often has very little to do with reality - in fact, if the particular bill is more about the allocation of funds than the establishment of policy, as is the case with the Stimulus. the dollar amounts have little to do with the final and specific totals.
In other words, Congress takes a spending bill and does what it wants AFTER the legislation passes. We THE PEOPLE do not have any control over the spending of our taxes.
Case in point:
Take the $700 billion TARP bill - September of 2008. More than $23 trillion has been run through that fund since its inception according to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the man put in charge of policing the TARP fund , its Special Inpector General, Neil Barofsky. Here is an article out of Bloomberg you need to read:
July 20 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. taxpayers may be on the hook for as much as $23.7 trillion to bolster the economy and bail out financial companies, said Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.
The Treasury’s $700 billion bank-investment program represents a fraction of all federal support to resuscitate the U.S. financial system, including $6.8 trillion in aid offered by the Federal Reserve, Barofsky said in a report released today.
“TARP has evolved into a program of unprecedented scope, scale and complexity,” Barofsky said in testimony prepared for a hearing tomorrow before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. end of excerpt.
What is rather humorous, as to the Bloomberg article cited above, is the fact that the 23 trillion dollar number is challenged within the text of the article with the "correct" total being closer to [only] 2 trillion dollars !!. Some correction !! In either case, our point is proven. TARP is nothing short of a slush fund for Obama'a congress and the American taxpayer has no clue as to amount of money spent by our congress. We are truly victims of taxation without representation - the very reason we revolted from England.
With that in mind, we return to the Stimulus bill. Midknight Review went to Wikipedia and found the word "nominal" used in association with the supposedly fixed amount of the bill, $787 billion. Understand that when "nominal" is used to qualify a particular description, it means the description is only an approximate amount or total. Carpenters know, for example, that a "two by four" is really a stick of wood that is 1 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches. We now know that the nominal total for the Stimulus expenditure is closer to $861 billion, due to the continuing addition of unemployment benefits. The intended total of "Cash for Clunkers" was to be $1 billion. In reality, that total had grown to $3 billion at last report and we do not know the actual and specific total of that allocation. On top of all this is the fact that "interest" is never rolled into the actual numbers for any bill and nearly 50% of all money spent in this country is borrowed from either ourselves or from foreign entities. That being true, there are no spending bills or dollar estimates that are not "nominal."
Finally, the above chart gives us another method of "fudging " on the numbers. Look at the circled headliner "infrastructure and science." The only part of the Stimulus bill that promises private sector jobs is that which is spent on "infrastructure" and that specific total is hidden from view with the addition of " . . . . and science." The actual allocation is a nominal $47 billion dollars for infrastructure repair or construction. A four-lane highway costs $300 million per mile to construct. If we do the math, Obama's allocation for infrastructure would lay down 2.5 miles of four lane highway per state. Most of the projects receiving funding have been under construction for more than three years and receive most their funding from state funds. In short, as relates to jobs creation, the Stimulus bill was never intended to actually stimulate a jobs related recovery.
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