Earlier this week, the President is unveiled a new line-item veto proposal to “rein in wasteful spending and hold Congress accountable.”
Concurrently Congress was putting the finishing touches on another $200 bullion faux-stimulus bill … that contains some of the hidden costs of ObamaCare and emergency relief to bond traders and racetrack operators.
This mega-spending is exempt from pay-as-you-go because it’s all emergency spending (huh?) and exempt from the line item veto since it hasn’t been enacted (and wouldn’t be applied to this junk any way).
I’m not sure if this stuff should be classified under “hope” or “change” …
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Excerpted from WSJ: American Jobbery Act, May 25, 2010
The House plans to vote this week on $190 billion in new spending, $134 billion of which it won’t even pretend to pay for.
- Note: “pay as you go” doesn’t apply to anything that is considered an emergency
The biggest item is $65 billion to prevent a 21% cut in Medicare physician reimbursements … complemented with $24 billion to help states pay the exploding tab for Medicaid
- Note: remember how ObamaCare was going to cut healthcare costs ? Oops … just kidding.
There’s $47 billion to extend unemployment insurance to nearly two full years.
- Note: economic studies consistently find that extending unemployment benefits tends to, well extend unemployment.
The rest is a grab bag of political payoffs, corporate welfare and transfer payments: including subsidies for municipal bond traders, cotton farmers, yarn producers, sheep growers, Hawaiian sugar cane cooperatives, motor sports businesses, renewable energy firms, the steel lobby, and so on.
- WSJ Note: Any industry that doesn’t get a tax credit or other handout in this bill should fire its lobbyist.
Of course, taxes will increase to partially fund this new spending.
- There’s a new 24 cent a barrel tax on oil companies because Congress says the industry’s profits are excessive.
- U.S. multinational companies would pay a higher tax rate on their overseas income.
- Managers of private equity and venture capital firms will see their tax rate on carried interest rise to as high as 35% from 15% today.
Full article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704113504575264532051783298.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h
The Homa Files 