The white elephant in the room right now is “stimulus.” The Democrats openly say they want at least $50 billion in stimulus as part of the fiscal cliff agreement. Obama wants unilateral authority to lift the debt ceiling whenever he wants to.
(We’ve seen how clever he is at spending money, even without any formal approval from Congress or anybody else.)
Extending the Bush tax cuts on the middle class is stimulus. We need it to keep the economy from dropping back into a double dip recession. If the Republicans don’t do that it’s going to be all their fault when the Great Recession turns into the Great Recession 2.0.
The question everybody should be asking is who does the stimulus help? Even the liberal economists say 40% of the stimulus money 3 years ago to avert the financial meltdown went to China; 60% or more went not to boost the U.S. economy but overseas economies. How does that work?
Well, 70% of the U.S. economy is consumer spending. 80% of the products (excluding food and energy) we buy are made overseas. 65% of the consumer and industrial durable goods we buy are made in China. 0.7 times 0.7 equals 0.49, so the 70 % of the consumer spending part of the stimulus is the same as saying 50% of the stimulus money goes right to China. That’s only the cash that’s injected directly into the Chinese economy. It doesn’t include all the indirect benefits to the ChiComs.
Our stimulus does more to benefit China than it does America.
We can’t let that happen again.
