Economic Stimulus: Obama Vs. Bush

When Bush became president we were in the middle of a recession and the pressure was on him to do something about the lagging economy. Bush presented an economic stimulus plan that had a set of tax rate reductions. John McCain did not vote for this plan because it did not have associated spending cuts with the tax rate reductions. Many people on the Democratic side have derided Bush's Tax Cuts because he did not cut the budget to match his tax plans. I agree he should have also reduced the size of the federal gov't to reduce deficit spending.

Obama has presented us an economic stimulus plan as the first thing he is going to do as president just like Bush. His plan doesn't have tax rate reductions but tax rebates or just plain hand outs to those not paying taxes. But he doesn't cut the spending to pay for his taxes plan. No he has spending increases. Long term spending increases in the billions to 100s of billions that will take years before measurable impacts to our economy are felt. This increase will also bloat the already way too large budget of many useless Gov't agencies that should quite honestly be shut down forever. Once a Gov't agency has a certain size budget it is very difficult to reduce the budget measurably. And if you do then you are looking at layoffs. Try laying off a Gov't employee in the Gov't Union.

Don't even start me on why a Union is needed for Gov't employees in a Democracy. They have the damn vote if they don't like management.

hmmm.... So far I like Bush's actual actions but Obama does give better parties for TV.