Dollars Making No-Cents/Some-Sense

From My Perspective - - -

Stimulus #1: $787 Billion. Needed – Stimulus #2 (the President hasn’t said how much it should be – just that we need more spending)! Problem – Senator Harry Reed stated we have yet to spend almost 90% of Stimulus #1. Stimulus #1 was supposed to fund “shovel-ready” infra-structure projects. This sounded logical and workable – but – it really hasn’t happened. Texas congressman Louis Gohmert (R 1st Dist.) offered a novel approach last year. He floated an idea of allowing the American people to go one full month without paying any federal income or payroll taxes. The idea was that they would then spend this money and stimulate the economy. When President Obama started talking about the $787 billion dollar stimulus the following could’ve been factored in. It seems that $787 billion is almost exactly equal to the amount of federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes withheld from American paychecks over a six-month period. What if we had not a one-month tax holiday, but a six month tax holiday? How about letting people keep almost their entire paychecks for one-half of a year?

A co-author of the book on: Fair Tax suggests “…two possible scenarios our politicians had to work with: (1) Borrow the $787 billion and let the politicians decide how it is going to be spent to stimulate our economy, or (2) Give the producers (tax-payers) a six month period in which they owe no federal income or payroll taxes. For these six months they get to keep their checks. This puts $787 billion into the hands of American workers - American producers - to spend and invest. There is one huge difference between the two plans. Under the government spending scenario the politicians get to decide how the money is spent. In other words, they get the power. Remember…power is the goal. Politicians want to decide which road is built, which park is refurbished, and which research project gets additional funding. Every one of these decisions would be made based on the political capital it will generate. Under the tax holiday plan the people, not the politicians, get to cast the ballots/dollars. Spending choices would not be made on the basis of political expediency, but on the free choices of the people. Businesses that delivered a good product and good customer service would get the votes, not politicians who delivered a pork project to their districts…”

The choices for our Congress and nation should be obvious: (1) Fiscal Discipline even when Restraints have been removed; (2) Stability even when Recklessness is the order of the day; (3) Frugalness even when the Vault is left open and the Treasury Printing Presses are running 24/7. The last six months of the previous administration and the first six months of the present administration has moved us to being a debtor nation. We are moving from strength to weakness. We are moving from being a respected nation to one that is being ridiculed. Dr. Anne Wortham is the black author of "The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness". She is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University 's Hoover Institution. On November 6, 2008 she wrote: “…So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world…The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person. So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to - Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine - what little there is left - for the chance to feel good. There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness…”

All of this reminds one of the indicting words to a Church in Revelation 3:17,22 - “You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” The appeal is: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." The Nation needs to listen and hear as well. Consider these things with me!