from OurFuture.org:
Firing Back on the Obama Recovery Package -- AgainBy Sara Robinson
February 12th, 2009 - 12:00pm ET
My God—they're still at it. Two weeks ago, I wrote a 10-point take-down of some of the biggest lies conservatives are telling about the stimulus bill. You can tell just how terrified they are: If this thing passes—and especially, God and Alan Greenspan forbid, if it actually works, even a little bit—it's going to discredit their entire model of how the economic world works. Because the battle over the stimulus package is nothing less than the battle for all the marbles, their Big Lie factory is working overtime, cranking out specious new absurdities on an almost daily basis.
And compared to the last round—some of which were at least sort of plausible if you squinted at them just right—this crop is just bizarre. You may also recognize a few of these points as second passes at arguments we covered in the first piece. In some cases, it's because they've reworked their argument to come at it from another direction; in others, it's because on our end, working out new and better comebacks is an ongoing process.
No matter how long and strange the trip gets, as long as they keep turning out these spittle-flecked fabulations, we'll be standing by to give you what you need to fight back. Here's the latest wave of obfuscating blather oozing out of the right -- and the snappy comebacks that will allow you to fire back.
1. The stimulus bill is just too big!
2. No, wait -- it's too small!There are plenty of economists -- including former World Bank head Joseph Stiglitz and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, who are two of the world's leading experts on how countries survive depressions -- who think that this bill is too small. They estimate that before it's all said and done, we'll need to spend between $1.2 trillion and $2 trillion to get to a truly effective recovery. In their view, this is nothing more than a good start. There's much more that will need to happen for America to really get back on its feet. This bill is the first salvo in what may turn out to be several different bills aimed at different parts of the crisis, assuming the conservatives in Congress aren't allowed to derail our efforts at recovery.
We need a bill that contains enough spending to make up for what consumers and businesses aren't putting into the economy right now. And we need to stay focused on getting families and employers right-side-up financially -- and the best way to do this is through spending that secures their jobs, enables them to make their mortgages, and invests public capital wisely to prepare us for the 21st century. That means spending on nutrition, education, health care, and infrastructure -- investments that have always, throughout history, yielded returns that are many, many times what we originally spent on them.
3. It's got too much pork in it!Conservatives have a rather specific definition of the word "pork." In conserva-speak, "pork" is defined as any government spending that benefits anybody who's not an investment banker or a defense contractor. If you ask them, $700 billion in bailouts to Wall Street is not pork. Neither is the $1 trillion-plus we've spent (largely on private contractors) in Iraq. And, of course, it's not "pork" when the conservatives loaded this very same stimulus bill with sweet giveaways to their patrons in the nuclear and "clean coal" industries. Nope. No pork there. Not at all. ........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009020710/firing-back-obama-recovery-package-again
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
