Stimulus Guts Welfare Reform, Is Deceptive

The stimulus package will gut welfare reform even more than previously feared. That’s the conclusion of Mickey Kaus, a moderate Democrat who now appears to regret voting for Obama. The stimulus package will reward states that promote welfare dependency, even more than federal subsidies did before the 1996 welfare reform law, and reduce economic growth.

Clayton Cramer notes that the stimulus package is being sold to the public under the false pretense that without it, we will go into another Great Depression, even though Congressional leaders know the economy will begin recovering soon even without any stimulus. He aptly compares the politics of the stimulus package to tribal leaders slaughtering cattle in order to make the sun rise, and then taking credit for the sun rising.

The Congressional Budget Office has admitted that within ten years, the economy will be smaller, not larger, because of the stimulus package, which will weigh down the economy under an enormous debt burden.

Many of the new, supposedly-temporary spending programs in the stimulus may wind up being made permanent, which could result in its true cost being above $3 trillion. Few rank-and-file members of Congress have actually read the 1,434-page stimulus bill, so it may be full of nasty surprises and hidden pork that we learn about only after it is signed into law.

Today, the Washington Examiner disclosed that the stimulus bill may end up funding the radical group ACORN. ACORN helped bring on the mortgage crisis by promoting “liar loans” and other high-risk loans to people with bad credit. It has a long history of financial fraud and vote fraud.