Damning with faint praise - the current Congressional Session
Hot Air has a wonderful post from Doctor Zero
regarding the 111th:
Remember the 111th
The 111th Congress began by dropping a trillion dollars in debt on the American taxpayer. The money disappeared in a wild spending spree, buying $2 million jobs in Los Angeles, and evaporating into nonexistent zip codes. Billions of dollars remain clogged in the filthy pipes of government, producing nothing but more debt through accumulated interest payments. Much of the “stimulus” money was used to pump lard into government payrolls, creating useless jobs that vanished as soon as the taxpayer subsidies ran dry. The President recently admitted that the stated reason for appropriating this vast sum of money, the creation of “shovel-ready jobs,” was an outright lie.
Government payrolls, are the only thing that expanded during the past session of Congress. Public sector jobs multiplied like a virus, and the number of six-figure government employees skyrocketed. Meanwhile, real unemployment in the private sector – including seasonal adjustments, long-term discouraged workers, and the underemployed – hit 22% nationwide. The lights burned bright and merry in the plush offices of K Street lobbying firms, while the rest of the economy slid into darkness.
This Congress demonstrated its economic wisdom with the Cash for Clunkers program, which wasted billions of your dollars in a futile attempt to shovel new car sales from one quarter to another, giving them a “success story” to tout for a while… until they realized nobody was gullible enough to consider it successful. Meanwhile, it drained sales from healthy industries, destroyed the used-car market, and provided incentives for low-income buyers to rack up more debt they cannot afford to repay.
More -- much much more complete with linky goodness.
Hat tip to
Little Miss Atilla for the link.
Posted by DaveH at October 30, 2010 8:55 PM