On January 29 President Obama criticized the banking industry for paying over $18million in bonuses to employees, calling it shameful. I must say that on this point I agree with him. The banks did run to the government for money saying that they were in “dire straits” and that without the money they might collapse, forcing the government to handover valuable tax payer money. This is shameful, however since no accountability was entangled with the bailout money the banks were given, I don’t think there is much we can honestly do. Watch the video below to hear Obama scold Wall Street.
There is one point I’d like to make here. While agreeing with President Obama’s sentiment, I find it very difficult to believe that he cares this much about their irresponsible use of tax payer money. Why? Because he and his democrat cronies in Washington are doing much much worse with tax payer money in this so called “stimulus” bill that the Senate will be voting on next week.
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We’ve looked it over, and even we can’t quite believe it. There’s $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn’t turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There’s even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons. In selling the plan, President Obama has said this bill will make “dramatic investments to revive our flagging economy.” Well, you be the judge. Some $30 billion, or less than 5% of the spending in the bill, is for fixing bridges or other highway projects. There’s another $40 billion for broadband and electric grid development, airports and clean water projects that are arguably worthwhile priorities. Add the roughly $20 billion for business tax cuts, and by our estimate only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus. And even many of these projects aren’t likely to help the economy immediately. As Peter Orszag, the President’s new budget director, told Congress a year ago, “even those [public works] that are ‘on the shelf’ generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to provide timely stimulus to the economy.” |
If the country’s economy is in such turmoil and is as bad as Obama keeps telling us, they why can’t these pet projects wait until the economy is in a better position to support such spending? How is it that it’s okay for the government to misuse our tax money yet it’s shameful if Wall Street does it? This is an incredible double standard.
Obama is basically talking out of both sides of his mouth. He’s pandering to the American public, calling Wall Street shameful, yet all the while he’s planning to spend our hard earned tax payer money on things that do nothing to stimulate the economy and will increase government spending in one year to record levels never seen in the U.S. before. And it’s these type of crooked politics that leave us with no trust in our government officials who were elected to work for the people, not exploit them. Remember, the government was created by the states and for the states, not the other way around.