Today, the administration published a report detailing how the stimulus has done. First, I think it's important to take a step back. Some indicators are showing that the economy is getting less worse than it was last month, but this is little consolation to the 500,000+ who lost jobs last month. Still, economists treated some of those numbers as positive signs, so we're not as bad as we were before.
Ok, onto the stimulus, this author of this article writes the following: The Obama administration, issuing its first progress report on the $787 billion stimulus program, said Wednesday that $88 billion has been made available and that it's ahead of schedule in implementing most initiatives.
Of the $88 billion, some $28.5 billion has been actually spent with nearly $16 billion going for Medicaid payments to the states, according to the report. The administration has also enacted tax cuts under the Making Work Pay program and begun mailing $250 payments to 54 million senior citizens.
Interesting. We've actually hardly spend any of the stimulus money, yet our economy isn't as badly off as we had feared. The article goes on with the next paragraph to say that critics are being critical that the stimulus money isn't being spent fast enough. Well, if that's the case, then up to know (with some given delay) we should be very susceptible to a decline as our economy wasn't propped up by the artificial demand and production created by the stimulus. Once those projects actually do get rolling, we should see a nice shot in the arm for the economy. This could actually be very good news.
This quotation is fascinating:
New budget gaps of $59 billion have opened up in at least 42 states plus the District of Columbia, according to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report released Wednesday. This equals about 9 percent of state budgets. These gaps are in addition to the $48 billion cumulative shortfall states faced during the current fiscal year.
So, what we have is a federal government who's well into deficit spending and then states who are cumulatively short on their budgets by about 100 Billion. Here's where a republican would say cut cut cut! But then again, we have to take a step back and look at how our society is actually operating. We have major infrastructural problems. Our east coast power network gave out once. Our airport system is overloaded. Our streets aren't big enough. Our police are too broke to fight crime. Our schools are too broke to teach kids. This is a broken system. And then the amazing thing is that the Republican party can only come up with tax cuts and cutting services. If we cut anymore services, we're going to start having an infrastructure which is unable to support our economy. How tragic would that be?
Source Article: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...