United Liberty

The folks are Recovery.Gov are doing their job informing us of the many vital projects that President Obama’s stimulus package is helping to fund.

Projects such as:

$ 5,708,260 for processed cheese for the Dept. of Agriculture

$1,562,568 for Mozarella Cheese, also for the Dept. of Agriculture

Barack Obama is defending the “stimulus” bill:

President Barack Obama said his $787 billion stimulus bill “has worked as intended” as he pushed back against Republican criticism that his recovery program has failed to rescue the economy.

“It has already extended unemployment insurance and health insurance to those who have lost their jobs in this recession,” Obama, who is traveling today in Ghana, said in his weekly Saturday radio and Web address. “It has delivered $43 billion in tax relief to American working families and business.”

Were it not for the stimulus program, the president said, “state deficits would be nearly twice as large as they are now, resulting in tens of thousands of additional layoffs — layoffs that would affect police officers, teachers, and firefighters.”

This neat little video does a great job of putting in perspective the promises the Obama Administration prior to the passage of the stimulus bill, and the reality of what actually occurred:

Democrats, including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and an advisor to President Barack Obama, are warming up to the idea of a second “stimulus” bill just a few days after Paul Krugman lobbied for it in the New York Times:

The U.S. should consider drafting a second stimulus package focusing on infrastructure projects because the $787 billion approved in February was “a bit too small,” said Laura Tyson, an outside adviser to President Barack Obama.

I believed, long before election day, that Barack Obama would be our next President, but I didn’t despair as many other Republicans did.  In fact, I often said that he would be the best thing that could happen to the Republican Party (providing, of course, that our country survives his socialist agenda), because I believe his presidency will provide the impetus we need to once again become the fiscally conservative party.

One thing I did not foresee, however, is how Obama would spur states into affirming the sovereignty guaranteed to them by the Tenth Amendment.  The recently passed “spendulous bill”, full of unfunded mandates that will ultimately demand funds from already beleaguered state budgets, has caused state governments across the nation to finally say, “Enough!”.

The Tenth Amendment states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

James Madison reiterated this ideology in The Federalist Papers:

The powers delegated to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, [such] as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people.

As many regular readers of this site know - I’m a big fan of Rep. Tom McClintock. He’s one of the most consistent fiscal conservatives I’ve ever known, and has a deep, profound and expressed reverence for the principles of the founders.

Yesterday Rep. Tom McClintock gave a floor speech where he outlined, quite clearly, the cost of Barack Obama’s stimulus plan to each American.

That’s $6,500 of new debt for every man, woman and child in the United States today – or $26,000 for an average family of four.  This is not a theoretical number.  That family will have to repay that $26,000 – plus interest – from their future taxes just as surely as if it appeared on the bottom of their credit card statement this month.

Here is an awesome parody video by Reason.tv (the online video arm of the libertarian Reason Magazine) about the economic stimulus package. Even if you support the stimulus package, you still should be able to appreciate the creativity in this mock ad. With the pro-stimulus agents seemingly have created an environment where passage is all but inevitable, using this type of humor is perhaps one of the few ways that the anti-stimulus crowd can get their message to stand out. As Politico points out — this ad would had been taken to another level if they had a Bob Dole cameo.

From Politico’s Arena on the Stimulus Package

Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform:

I notice that the question today is about the “recovery” plan. As I told the Bush folks when they were demanding support for their $750 billion “recovery” plan, it is only a recovery plan if it makes the economy stronger. The “million man march” wasn’t and the “stimulus” plan won’t. But credit for clever spin.

With all the talk of the inevitable “stimulus package” floating around, why is it that most commentators seem to leave out the fact that even without a “stimulus package” the nation is already on track to receive the largest Keynes inspired stimulus since 1945?