Then the (to me) scary stuff:
The Blog of the Director of the Congressional Budget Office has posted its analysis of HR 1 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. You know, the "stimulus" bill. Its not stimulus. Its wild government spending. Only 64% of the $816Billion would be back in the economy by October 2010. The rest is spread out until 2019.
Here's the thing that really bothers me about this. Its the Republican's fault. Its former President Bush's fault. You can't come to the American people and say "Holy crap! We've got a problem that we didn't see coming and we need to pour $750Billion into banks & wall street firms RIGHT NOW!" without future repurcussions. Once the "Party of Fiscal Responsibility and Small Government" sells that to the American people there's no reason to believe that the liberal "Tax & Spend" democrats are going to behave any better. This stimulus bill is basically the Democrats answer to the bailout bill.
So, how about a sensible solution. Rich Lowry writes a strong argument for suspending (or abolishing) the payroll tax (this idea is near the bottom of the article). It can be enacted IMMEDIATELY. It puts money in people's pockets IMMEDIATELY. It lowers labor costs to businesses IMMEDIATELY. I'm not saying that it should be the only thing in the stimulus plan, but it ABSOLUTELY SHOULD be in it.
Let's take that as the base and expand the idea to not only keep costs lower so businesses have options around employment, but lets incent hiring with this idea as well.
Tell the government how many employees you had on Jan 1, 2009 (call that number x). Tell the govt how many employees you have on Dec 31, 2009 (y) - so you've added "z" employees to you payrolls. For the next 5 years, as long as you have at least "y" employees, you get a 50% reduction in payroll taxes for "z" employees (not those specific employees, just the number of them).
What ideas do you have for a "stimulus"?
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