WASHINGTON – Public opposition to Democrats’ big-spending economic stimulus bill has surged as Americans continue to learn and dislike what they see in it.
A recent national Rasmussen poll found that just 37 percent supported the pending plan, 43 percent opposed and 20 percent were unsure. Public opposition has increased by almost 10% in the last two weeks.
Gallup polling now shows that 37 percent want Congress to make “major changes” to the laws before they pass them, and 17 percent want the plan abandoned because they believe it is too pricey and won’t work.
The so-called economic recovery plan, which tips the scales at nearly $1 trillion (including borrowing costs), is the most pricey piece of legislation in American history. It cuts into spending and limits much-needed income tax cuts.
However, what really turns so many citizens against this legislation is the mountain of wasteful spending of a specific nature contained within it.
Both the House and Senate bills are laden with an appalling number of pork-filled, waste-filled giveaways that will do little or nothing to create jobs or grow the economy again. I have reported on the squandering of the bill, but we find up-to-date spending almost every day. Here are some of the latest:
— $25 million to build or renovate off-road ATV trails.
— $34 million to renovate the U.S. Department of Commerce building in Washington
– $70 million to “support supercomputing activities” for climate research.
— $20 million “to remove small and medium-sized fish passage barriers.”
— $20 million in additional funding for the Department of the Interior.
— $350 million for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to buy up-to-date computers.
– $75 million to discourage smoking.
– $650 million for wildlife management.
– $400 million for HIV screening.
— $726 million for after-school snack programs.
– $1 billion for the 2010 census.
— $650 million for digital TV vouchers.
– $1 billion for climate satellite and habitat restoration programs.
— $400 million for state and local governments to purchase up-to-date vehicles.
— $600 million to replace part of the federal government’s vehicle fleet.
– $7.7 billion for renovation and repair of federal buildings.
– $13 billion in state grants for special education.
— $15.6 billion for Pell Grants.
– $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts.
— $44 million for building repairs at the Department of Agriculture.
— $122.5 million for up-to-date Coast Guard icebreakers.
– $198 million in payments to Filipino World War II veterans.
When asked about these and other earmarked items, President Obama ignores their costs, saying they represent “less than 1 percent of the total package.” Incredibly, he believes Democratic lawmakers showed “extraordinary discipline” in crafting the legislation.
However, the president’s 1 percent is based on both the spending and tax cut portions of the House bill. When these and many other questionable expenses are applied to just $500 billion, they take up a significant portion of the bill’s funding.
This doesn’t mean that some of this expense isn’t worth it. There is simply no interest in an economic stimulus bill. Democrats, who introduced much of this and other legislation, allocated their spending money “on the stimulus train before it leaves the station,” an appropriations adviser told me.
“Some or all of this spending may be worth debating, but to claim that it will create immediate jobs — after all, that is the goal of this legislation — is, to put it mildly, a stretch,” said House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio .
But Senate Democrats said the House’s $825 billion plan was still too anemic and added a slew of other spending provisions, bringing the total cost to more than $900 billion.
Among the additions in the race for free spending for all was $6.5 billion for the National Institutes of Health. It was adopted unanimously.
At one point in the Senate’s spending spree, Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma proposed a modest amendment to eliminate one tax cut that Democrats had quietly inserted into the bill to benefit wealthy left-wing Hollywood campaign donors.
The provision would provide $246 million in tax breaks to major film production companies. “It’s a gift. It won’t stimulate the economy at all,” an irate Coburn told his colleagues.
Coburn is accustomed to defeats in his campaign against wasteful spending, but this time, to his surprise, his amendment to remove the tax break from the bill passed 52 to 45. Enough Democrats were embarrassed and embarrassed by the obvious payoff to the largest and largest party of their party’s richest donors.
At least one Senate Democrat was willing to say on the record that her party had gone too far in its zeal for spending taxpayer money.
“Some of these programs were on such a starvation diet that the appropriators in the House became a little concerned. They probably did some things they shouldn’t have done,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri.
Wall Street executives are rightly ridiculed for giving themselves huge bonuses while their investors lose half their retirement savings. But these excesses are minor compared to the spending spree currently taking place in Congress that will weaken our economy and plunge us into generations of debt.
