SCRAP THE STIMULUS BILL

With only ten percent of the nearly 800-billion stimulus money spent so far, and 60-percent of the American public opposed to the stimulus bill enacted by a Congress that did not even take time to read it, it is time for that same Congress to do a little rethinking. (Take heart skeptics, miracles do happen!)

Congress can start by scraping the Obama stimulus bill. The ten percent of the stimulus spent so far has been doled out mostly to favored Democrat constituencies and to cities and states to plug budget deficits caused by overspending during more economically affluent times. Rescind the stimulus bill. Then pass a stimulus we know historically, works - tax cuts.

Travel back in time to 1980. Jimmy Carter is put out to pasture by a recession-weary electorate and Ronald Reagan inherits double digit unemployment and double digit inflation. With the help of enlightened Democrats and supportive Republicans, Reagan cut taxes across the board; lowering income taxes, business taxes and capital gains taxes. It worked. By 1982 the economy was making a gigantic right turn. By 1984 it was humming.

With unemployment expected to top 10-percent in the third quarter, what people need now, immediately, are jobs and money. Slashing personal income taxes will put more spendable income into the paychecks of workers. Lowering business taxes will incentivize small businesses (and big) to begin expanding and hiring to take advantage of increased consumer spending. Small business is the employer-in-chief in this country, accounting for 80-percent of new jobs.

The Federal Reserve and the FDIC could be useful in this turning around of the economy by helping free up revolving lines of credit by banks to both businesses and consumers. Keeping interest rates low will help.

If states begin to see tax revenues reversing their current sharp decline, governors and legislatures can fund their own public works projects to relieve unemployment. The fewer hands our tax money filters through, the more that is left to spend on what tax revenue is suppose to fund.

We do not need any further expansion of federal government. We need leaner government – federal, state and municipal – and the federal government’s hands out of our lives, our paychecks and our private enterprise economy. This is a country that can no longer emulate that great line from our economic past and expect to remain financially secure in the future – as General Motors goes, so goes the nation.