Three Problems with the New Economic Stimulus Bill

Posted September 18th, 2008 at 4.26pm in Ongoing Priorities.

Heritage’s Rea Hederman discusses three problems with the proposed Economic Stimulus Bill currently before Congress. In July, the Bill was projected to cost $25 billion dollars. Since then, the projected cost has doubled due to spending projects that should have been taken care of with the Budget process. The Bill will also increase the already large national deficit. The most expensive items are proven failures.

Hederman also points out sensible measures that Congress can do to help the economy, lower gas prices, as well as lower the cost of food at the same time.

Author: Todd Thurman
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3 Comments

September 18, 2008 Darvin Dowdy, Houston, TX writes:

There y’all go again. Pickin’ on the Corn Ethanol Program. I was in the store today and saw a can of Green Giant corn: 59 cents. And my favorite Mexican food place, yes they had to go up. About 50 cents for a plate of enchiladas. Big Deal!

What about the massive amount of export money our nation is bringing in as a result of the higher worldwide price of grain? Have you forgotten that the U.S. is the largest exporter of grain on the globe? And that the Corn Ethanol program has, indeed, driven the price of grain up?

The 6.7 billion people on this earth have to eat and they depend on U.S. farmers and agri-business to fill their belly’s. And the U.S. farmer deserves to be paid well for their hard work. Grain prices are finally at a level where that can be realized.

Its not like the HF dynamo’s to limit themselves to one facet of a many faceted issue. We expect more from you and 99.9% of time we get it. Why not this time? Darvin Dowdy

September 21, 2008 Steve writes:

Just one question in response to Darvin’s comment:

Does it make sense to burn food?

September 22, 2008 Branden Petersen, Coon Rapids,MN writes:

Darwin,

The problem isn’t necessarily the corn alone, you are right about that. It is the government intervention in a market creating artificially high prices on both corn and grain. Why would the government subsidize ethanol if it isn’t a viable, efficient fuel source? What happens to those farmers making record profitswhen there isn’t an unfair subsidy from the government? Yes, you guessed it, they may fail and that is what happens when you don’t bring the right product at the right price to the market. If you don’t allow someone to fail then when does it all end? It ends when the taxpayer can’t bear the burden of failing, inefficient “private” business.

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