The American Freedom Network

ASP: Alternative Stimulus Plan

February 4, 2009 – 10:37 am

Dear Friends: Loving ancient Egypt as I do (see my sacred shrine to Flaming Capitalism here), I could not resist using the acronym for the Alternative Stimulus Plan that my mentor, the Anchoress, proposed:

Let’s have a stimulus bill with no roundaboutation: Just give every taxpayer, no matter how much they pay or how little, a lump sum of say $67,372.42 Yes, I pulled that number out of my hat, but I’m pretty sure that’s how Mrs. Pelosi and congress do it, too.

Allow people to spend the money or make mortgage payments with it, and eliminate the many, many middlemen who are waiting around to get bailout money they’ll only mismanage, anyway.

There. That’s it. My 1-2-3 stimulus program.

1) Give all taxpayers that amount of money.
2) Make the Bush tax cuts permanent.
3) Make people who don’t pay their taxes pay them.

You have a better stimulus plan than what Mrs. Pelosi and the Congress are offering? Feel free to share it.

I might also add reducing our confiscatory corporate tax rate. But, otherwise, the Anchoress has come up with the superior plan.

Tom Coburn, the Republican Senator from Oklahoma, has the following comments on the current plan, nicknamed “Porkulus”. He adds another option, as noted below; for his full opinion, click here:

As a nation, we got into this mess by spending and investing money that didn’t exist. We won’t get out of it by doing more of the same….

Instead of a bailout, Congress could offer states an emergency loan that could be repaid at a low interest rate. This approach apparently wasn’t considered because the members who wrote the bill aren’t simply interested in saving jobs — they want to push their agenda along the way….

What is not in the bill is as troubling as what is. The package does nothing to clear the toxic assets and bad mortgages that helped trigger the credit crisis. It also contains very little meaningful tax relief to make small businesses and American companies more competitive. Instead, the tax provisions of the stimulus are essentially a modest cash handout that repeats the failed policy of George W. Bush’s rebate-check stimulus.

Right Resolve has provided a detailed pork list; the items I find the most troubling include:

• $75 million to construct a “security training” facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies.

• A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film

• $75 million for “smoking cessation activities.” (MUT note: We have come to depend on smokers for the tax revenue — we need more of them, not less).

In related news, Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated that 500 million jobs would be lost each month if her plan failed to pass. To put this into scientific perspective, that is 200 million more people than the sum total population of the United States of America (presently at about 306 million people).