Yet even as budget director Peter Orszag was speaking, House Democrats were moving on a dozen spending bills for fiscal 2010 that total 12.1% in more domestic discretionary increases.
Yes, 12.1%.
Remember, inflation is running close to zero, or 0.8%. The good news, if we can call it that, is that Senate Democrats only want to increase nondefense appropriations by 8% for 2010. Because these funding increases become part of the permanent baseline for future appropriations, the 2010 House budget bills would permanently raise annual outlays for discretionary programs by about $75 billion a year from now until, well, forever.
Remember, this money has to come from somewhere. Government only gets money either directly by raising taxes or indirectly by printing new money, which devalues the wealth of citizens. Borrowing money from elsewhere only delays the date of taxation or inflation, unless the government can trick its creditors into accepting devalued currency as repayment of its debts. At some point we (or later generations) will have to pay for this spending.
White House Drops “Saved or Created”
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010The administration has decided to change the way in which it counts the number of jobs affected by stimulus spending. Previously, it used the measure “saved or created,” which counts jobs that would have been lost or would never have existed without stimulus spending. Since we don’t know for sure what would have happened without the stimulus, the measure depended heavily on subjective projections.
The new measure tracks the number of jobs funded by the stimulus, a much more objective count. However, it isn’t particularly useful for gauging the stimulus’ effectiveness. The government is just one employer among many; the number of new employees it has signals the strength of the economy no more than the number of new hires at Google or Citibank. Additionally, the fact that the government funded a job doesn’t mean that the new employee creates anything of value. For example, spending $1.1 million dollars to fix a guard rail in a little used stretch of Oklahoma highway doesn’t add much value to the economy. Google could probably put that $1.1 million to use more effectively.
Tags: employment, recovery, spending, statistics, stimulus
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