*The Destructive Center* By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: February 8, 2009
> 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 bill just accomplished. > Even if the original Obama plan — around $800 billion in stimulus, with a > substantial fraction of that total given over to ineffective tax cuts — had > been enacted, it wouldn't have been enough to fill the looming hole in the > U.S. economy, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will amount to > $2.9 trillion over the next three years. > > Yet the centrists did their best to make the plan weaker and worse. > > One of the best features of the original plan was aid to cash-strapped > state governments, which would have provided a quick boost to the economy > while preserving essential services. But the centrists insisted on a $40 > billion cut in that spending. > > The original plan also included badly needed spending on school > construction; $16 billion of that spending was cut. It included aid to the > unemployed, especially help in maintaining health care — cut. Food stamps — > cut. All in all, more than $80 billion was cut from the plan, with the great > bulk of those cuts falling on precisely the measures that would do the most > to reduce the depth and pain of this slump. > On the other hand, the centrists were apparently just fine with one of the > worst provisions in the Senate bill, a tax credit for home buyers. Dean > Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research calls this the "flip your > house to your brother" provision: it will cost a lot of money while doing > nothing to help the economy. > > All in all, the centrists' insistence on comforting the comfortable while > afflicting the afflicted will, if reflected in the final bill, lead to > substantially lower employment and substantially more suffering. > -- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/opinion/09krugman.html?ex=1391922000&en=0b1f3226c2bef9ce&ei=5124 -Lance --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Politically Opinionated Outspoken People Expounding Religion" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pooper?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
