Give me a break….

I don’t disagree that infrastructure projects, and many other things in the bill such as health care IT, might be worth it. However, they are primarily short term stimulus. The reason Obama has said he wants to act fast with this is that it is short term stimulus that is time sensitive. If it is also laden with other government spending (worth while or not), then it seems irresponsible to push it through quickly without giving it the time we would normally take to debate specifics on how that money would be best used.

So it seems to me the best solution would be to strip out anything that does not create jobs in the very short term, and then debate the rest of the spending in separate bills. The only logical reason I can see to lump them together is to make it easier to get them through and make anyone who might oppose them appear to be against saving the economy.

Troubling? Um, hasn’t that been pretty much the only thing the GOP has done for the past 8 years?

You do realize that the CBO numbers that were circulated, when put into proper context, demonstrates the exact opposite of what Republicans claimed, right? But I guess there’s really no point trying to point out the truth to somebody who writes posts entitled “Obama Gives Terrorists A License to Kill.”

Get a new schtick.

To the other Mike,

Your $275,000 number is a really misleading characterization of the stimulus. The point of the stimulus isn’t to just create jobs. It’s to rebuild our country’s infrastructure so we can be competitive in the near future. And that, in turn, will produce millions more jobs.

(Not that it’s important, but ironically I actually heard Rush Limbaugh make that argument a week ago or so. I’m not a regular listener by the way, but I heard him make that point and I disagree. He was saying Obama was trying to make businesses look bad for not hiring. Anyway…).

Actually I think it depends on the business. There may be a lack of customers purchasing a product at a particular price point, which may make it unprofitable to keep people employed making that product. However, if a tax break effectively decreases the cost of employing that person, and then allows the company to stay profitable selling the product at a lower price (at which consumers will buy), then that job is saved.

I’m no expert (not that you were wondering:), but it seems to me that most jobs are lost at the margins. People typically don’t lose their jobs because they suddenly are worthless. Every employee adds some amount of value to the company (admittedly, this amount is hard to measure), and one that value becomes less than the amount required to employ them, they get laid off. If companies have an additional tax incentive to keep that job, that would effectively decrease the amount that it costs to employ them, meaning they would be more likely to be able to keep their jobs.

So yes, I think it would take a relatively small tax break to create or save a job.

However where I think the “Limbaugh math”, as Mark put it, does fall short (I admitted before it was an over-simplification) is that there is a diminishing return here. If my goal is to save 1 job, I could probably create enough incentive using only maybe 10,000 of tax break. There’s bound to be some company looking to hire (or not lay off), if only they had a bit of extra cash on hand. However, creating 3 million jobs is a different story. Once you run out of the low-hanging fruit, you have to start paying more and more to create each job.

Still, it seems to me that there is a lot in this bill that is put there just because its a great opportunity to get some spending in that might not get passed otherwise. When Obama says 75% will be spent in the next 18 months, I just can’t help but think about the HUGE amount that the other 25% represents, which should be debated on its own merits.

I guess we are back to the days of “depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

If there are not enough customers purchasing a business’s product to keep an employee busy, the business will lay the worker off whether they get a tax break or not. It is not business that creates jobs- it’s customers.

Why I don’t get is why the Democrats cower and grow defensive as a result?

How sad for us all … that there are no opposition parties, i.e., just liars and apologists.

So, if creating jobs is the primary goal of the stimulus package, the numbers I brought up are valid and beg the question: is this the most efficient the package can be?

Which brings me to Geri’s point. Yes, I have heard that some economists have said that infrastructure projects generate more jobs than tax cuts, although it doesn’t make sense to me because it seems it would take a relatively small tax break to create an incentive not to lay off a person. But, I’m not an economist so I’ll leave the tax cut vs. government spending debate to the professionals, and I’m concede you might be right about that. I’m not partial to either party, so if the Republicans are wrong to push for tax cuts, they deserve criticism also.

However, you also point out that the goal of the package is not just stimulus but also support of state government programs and such to help those suffering most because of the recession. I agree that is part of it, and perhaps justifiably so, but there is no question that the stated primary goal of the package is job growth, but it seems to be lacking in its ability to do so, considering its cost. If the only reason that is so is because it is loaded down with other spending for other goals, then one has to question whether the stated primary goal of job growth is sincere. And, as a side note, one of the best ways to help those who are worst hit by the recession is to create more jobs, so I stand by my criticism that this plan seems to be quite costly to accomplish the stated goals, even using Obama’s own numbers.

What a funny site this is. The above is stated like Republicans spreading false information is something new. NOT!

MIKE – “$825,000,000,000 dollars to create or save 3,000,000 jobs equals $275,000 for each job”. This is Limbaugh math. That is – while the number is factually true, it is a gross misrepresentation of fact that is stated in a way to be DELIBERATELY misleading. Most of the money being spent is going to be spent on roads, bridges, repairs, etc. SO, some of the money pays 3,000,000 people to work, and most of the rest goes to buy parts and materials from American companies which further helps the jobs base of the country.

$825,000,000,000 dollars to create or save 3,000,000 jobs equals $275,000 for each job. Now I realize that this measure is an over-simplification, but that is a huge number that ought to give us pause.

If we were to put his money to other use, it seems it would be much more efficient. You would not have to give a company $275,000 dollars to create an incentive for them to create or save 1 job.

Secondly, Obama says at least 75% of the money will be spent in the first 18 months. But even 25% is still hundreds of billions of dollars for things that have nothing to do with stimulus. Since this is a stimulus package, how do you justify the number of money being spent in the next year and half to be anything less than 100%? The other 25% are just run-of-the-mill government spending, hundreds of billions of dollars worth, that Obama wants to get into a bill that can’t fail. Some of that spending might be warranted, but why not debate that on its own merits instead of rushing it through with the rest of the stimulus spending?

But then again, he won, so I guess we’ll see how this goes.