- Location
- Kansas City
* Currently, there are about 152 different appropriations, with little more than costlier versions of the status quo. Only 11 of the appropriations actually focus on job creation. The others focus on health, education, entitlement and other spending—e.g., nurse training, Medicare, Head Start, boatyard support, home weatherization, etc. (2) The proposal will really have little short-term impact. As mentioned, many parts have nothing to do with stimulus. There are basic research and special education programs, for example. As Brooks mentions, “A study by the Congressional Budget Office found that less than half of the money for infrastructure and discretionary programs would be spent by October 1, 2010.” According to the Washington Post, of the $30 billion devoted to highway spending, only $4 billion will be spent in the next two years. Less than $3 billion of the $18.5 billion for renewable energy and less than half the financing for school construction will be spent by 2011. (3) The spending measures have “no sunset” in them. Once the crisis is passed, will this spending end? These commitments will be in all future budgets and will all contribute to further government spending because they will be entitlements! That is not reforming how we do government in this nation.
George Will writes: “Events are making reform more necessary while making it seem less urgent. A nation in which $350 billion was but the first half of the Troubled Asset Relief Program and in which TARP is distinct from the perhaps $825 billion ‘stimulus’ program, is a nation being taught not to take seriously sums with merely nine digits and two commas.”
There is an instinctive cry for help in a crisis like this. For someone who faces a job cut or health crisis and watches retirement savings wither away, I have three things to say about money: (1) How did you get it? (Legally and justly or exploitatively?); (2) What are you doing with it? (Indulging in luxuries or helping the needy?); and (3) What is it doing to you? Much of what Jesus taught focused on the third question. Finally, this financial meltdown must cause us as a civilization to rethink the importance of terms like greed, moderation, integrity and trust. A functioning economy is held together by these terms and, if absent, will collapse. That is what we are now seeing. May God have mercy on us!
This was written by one of my professors and it is very pointed for these times.
George Will writes: “Events are making reform more necessary while making it seem less urgent. A nation in which $350 billion was but the first half of the Troubled Asset Relief Program and in which TARP is distinct from the perhaps $825 billion ‘stimulus’ program, is a nation being taught not to take seriously sums with merely nine digits and two commas.”
There is an instinctive cry for help in a crisis like this. For someone who faces a job cut or health crisis and watches retirement savings wither away, I have three things to say about money: (1) How did you get it? (Legally and justly or exploitatively?); (2) What are you doing with it? (Indulging in luxuries or helping the needy?); and (3) What is it doing to you? Much of what Jesus taught focused on the third question. Finally, this financial meltdown must cause us as a civilization to rethink the importance of terms like greed, moderation, integrity and trust. A functioning economy is held together by these terms and, if absent, will collapse. That is what we are now seeing. May God have mercy on us!
This was written by one of my professors and it is very pointed for these times.
