Bloodthirsty Liberal

[Another in a list of great post titles, if I do say so myself.]

When you learn what the Congressional Budget Office has to say about the screw-you-lous package, you assume that the bill would be killed by, you know, Congress.

…the short-run effects on output that operate by increasing demand for goods and services would eventually fade away…

…the Senate legislation would reduce output slightly in the long run, CBO estimates, as would other similar proposals…

To the extent that people hold their wealth in the form of government bonds rather than in a form that can be used to finance private investment, the increased government debt would tend to “crowd out” private investment—thus reducing the stock of private capital and the long-term potential output of the economy.

You poor, deluded clod. Has Congress ever met a fatback bill—even a counterproductive fatback bill—it could refuse?

So, your representatives of the “most deliberative body in the world” have barely a day to digest and debate the 778-page legislative text before rushing to vote on cloture Monday evening.

…

In the meantime, make note of this observation from Justin Hart in response to the earlier chart outlining the Sellout Amendment’s bottom-line spending statistics:

Agriculture: $5,109,430
Commerce: $21,513,000
Defense: $3,746,000
Energy & Water: $53,843,000
Financial & Gen. Govt: $10,762,000
Homeland Security: $5,076,700
Interior: $11,643,600
Labor, HHS, Education: $169,184,000
Military & VA: $7,428,295
THUD: $60,580,500
Appropriations: $365,629,525 (of course, this one isn’t broken out)

Bottom line: Global Warming, Government Healthcare, Teachers Unions, School Building Contractors, Subsidized Housing, and MASSIVE Pork.

Obviously, these numbers are meaningless out of context—but there is certainly meaning in the comparison between money for defense and the military, just north of 11 billion, and money for “social” programs (almost wrote “socialist”—can you blame me?), over 169 billion.

Can someone remind me what the first duty of any government is? Or has the world gotten a lot safer since I went to bed?

But just to reiterate my point (which I don’t think I’ve iterated yet):

The increased government debt would tend to “crowd out” private investment—thus reducing the stock of private capital and the long-term potential output of the economy.

As they say in programming circles, that’s not a bug—it’s a feature.

There are two possibilities as I see things: either Congress and Obama are stupid—actually mentally deficient—or they mean to do exactly what they are doing. Crippling the capitalist system in America forever cements in place a Democratic view of life, in which no one has too much and all have nothing.

One more possibility: they are both imbeciles and commies.