Obama\u2019s latest stimulus (AKA \u201cjobs bill\u201d) is more of the same. Raise taxes on the rich to finance popular government hiring\u2014teachers, firefighters, police officers, and construction workers. Unfortunately this stimulus package is fraught with the same four problems as his previous proposals.<\/p>\n
First, Obama\u2019s proposal is a classic false choice. If his spending package is so important, then why couldn\u2019t it be financed with cuts in welfare? In reality, his plan is more about reelection than job creation. Support his proposal and you side with education, public safety, and highways. Oppose it and you side with the fat cats. This is class warfare at its finest.<\/p>\n
Second, in most instances government spending is less efficient than what comes from the private sector. As we saw with the previous stimulus, Washington\u2019s cash transfer to the states wasn\u2019t always used as it was originally intended. As Obama put it, some of the jobs weren\u2019t as shovel-ready as we thought. There\u2019s no reason to believe that Washington can \u201ccreate\u201d more jobs by confiscating and spending funds that would otherwise be allocated in the private sector.<\/p>\n
Finally, it\u2019s not the responsibility of the federal government to tax residents of one state or community to pay for police officers, firefighters, or teachers in another locale. The same holds true for building bridges and paving roads. States are free to raise their own taxes. Of course, they\u2019d prefer that Washington print more money or incur debt instead. This type of federal-to-state transfer is unconstitutional in my view, but common sense alone should tell us that it\u2019s not the best approach anyway.<\/p>\n
Hopefully most Americans will see through Obama\u2019s old wine in new wineskins. We can\u2019t afford any more delusion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Obama\u2019s latest stimulus (AKA \u201cjobs bill\u201d) is more of the same. Raise taxes on the rich to finance popular government hiring\u2014teachers, firefighters, police officers, and construction workers. Unfortunately this stimulus package is fraught with the same four problems as his previous proposals. First, Obama\u2019s proposal is a classic false choice. If his spending package is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}