Forbidden Donut

Mmmm spending, my favorite!

Edit: I'm sure you can guess my opinion about it, so I'm afraid my input is not really useful as a conversation piece.

I might be okay with a stimulus bill, but this is a spending bill in its current form. I understand we need new bridges and crap, but why include such things in the same bill when it will only serve to cause a delay in passing it, which is apparently suicidal. (maybe because the same people who want the bridges and roads also want the bill to be passed as soon as possible b/c we are doomed in order to sneak an abundance of shit through). Why cant we just take the money intended to go toward a stimulus package and use it to fund social security taxes for one year so that every worker gets a stimulus in the form of not paying that tax for a year.

Better yet, explain to me how cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25% would not create new jobs??

It may not create jobs, but it will probably save some jobs. It'll allow companies to spend more on employees.

As for the stimulus, I think the effect will still be very limited. Most people are going to use it to pay off debt which will not help the economy much. Many people will save at least a portion of it. The money that does get spent will help, but it won't stop the spiral.

I'd love to see the bill cut out some of the pork. I don't think the most Keynesian economist can defend all of it.

Did Obama make any promises about pork barrel spending? Allowing it to continue seems to be the opposite of the change we were promised.

Obama can veto the entire bill, but then he'd veto the stimulus package. The good news is that a good number of congress men and women (D and R) are looking to lighten up the pork. I still don't understand why a bill that is "necessary" needs a ton of pork to pass.

Why yes.

He promised:
To require more disclosure and a waiting period for earmarks.

To expose "tax earmarks" to public scrutiny.

And to reduce earmarks to 1994 levels.

/"the number of earmarks has grown from 4,155 valued at $29 billion in 1994 to 14,211 worth $53 billion a decade later."

All this talk of pork...

What's pork?
Before answering that, read this. (tl;dr version)

To say there is no pork in this bill is flat out wrong, but I can't help but shake the feeling that this "pork" stuff is a red-herring. If the bill fails, with it's tremendous amount of tax relief, then the democrats are gonna get railed on next election for not lowering taxes. If the bill succeeds they will be railed on for filling it with pork.

Does anybody know how much of the package is made of what is being called pork?

There was an article with what the Repubs called pork. Some of it could go either way, but one thing that got me was more digital converter box vouchers. It was high up on the list and I couldn't stop thinking about why that was on there. They are already being handed out from what I've witnessed, and I don't see many people who are still using an antenna. There were Dems that thought the pork was going too far and wanted to reduce it as well. I didn't see what they were going for.

I'll look for the Repub list.

edit: Here we go.

Here was a good one



edit2: Here's a WSJ article on the ARRA.

Okay. I decided to not argue that most of those things aren't 'pork' when it's a stimulus package. Surprise surprise, you're going to be spending money on projects to stimulate the economy. Those projects require employees to complete, who will then spend that money, which will be taxed... etc.

Better plan fo' sho' than "dump money in the bankers pockets and watch them continue to not lend it."

Instead of that, I decided to do some math.
The article outlines $19,100,000,000.00 in what the republicans are crying foul over.

The bill outlines $815,000,000,000.00 in total.

All I hear about this bill when I turn on the news, or read about it, is how 'pork-laden' it is. Well, by my calculations, the pork makes up exactly 2.34% of the total package.

You know what, I will argue what they are calling pork.


aka: 6 billion dollars to fuel green innovations and the creation of a bunch of contractor and construction jobs which will lead to manual laborers having money in pocket which they will spend on TVs and the internet, and eating out. And this accounts for 1/3 of what is being complained about. Take that out and you're left with 13.1 billion or 1.61% of the bill.

I'm not getting into the validity of all this spending, just the demonizing it as pork as a way to roadblock it, wait 2 years, and ask "how come the dumbocrats didn't lower your taxes like they promised. TAX AND SPEND LIBERALS!"

/tinfoil

Well, $19,100,000.00 is not a small number. It may be a small percentage of the bill, but come on. I can see where a lot of the spending could help, but are there other things that they could spend it on that'd be more helpful?

I'm sure if I felt like it I could write my own list of things I consider pork from that very large bill, but the bill will probably pass and I'll get to worry about America maxing out its credit card.

19 billion dollars is far more than what democrats are upset with Wall Street spending for its lavish lifestyle. A good portion of the responsibility for this whole mess is on politicians in Washington, so why should they be allowed to waste our money?

Just playing devil's advocate though. I hate all $900 billion dollars of it.

Rgr that.

I'm not really trying to argue for the merits of a massive spending bill. I just think that there are a lot of legitimate gripes about this bill, and that the discussion of how porky it is is distracting from the real problems with it. I heard a guy on the radio this morning call in and claim that over 600 billion dollars of this bill is pork. That's some serious misinformation (or he has a pretty loose definition of pork...) It just rubs me the wrong way for some reason.

I think that the 200+ billion in middle class tax cuts/rebates/freemoney can possibly help. It's at least a better plan than the last one. I'd actually be able to get behind the bill if it made a lot of it's spending dependent on the tax breaks not doing anything.

The only other narrative you can hear about this topic in standard news outlets (without digging yourself) is how partisan the voting is. "Why can't the Democrats present a bill that the Republicans can vote Yes on?" is the big morning talk show point of the day. When Republicans were in power I seem to recall stalled votes also being blamed on the Democrats for playing obstruction politics.

In reality, both sides were in lengthy discussions for several days before the house vote. The republicans wanted less spending, which they got (from about 600 billion down to about 500 billion) and they wanted more tax cuts for people making more than 200k/year. Which they got (at the time raising the total price tag from 815 billion to 860 billion). Then they all voted no.

It all just reeks of dishonesty to me. Cover to cover.

Sounds like proper politics to me.

The way I remember Pork Barrel spending to be defined was government spending that helped an isolated area or group. Where you draw the line at helping someone, I don't know. We can play six degrees with that and prove that any government spending can help anyone. That is where I think the ambiguity on the definition comes from.

I think the movie film one was a clear case of pork. I don't see that helping much of anyone. Sure, movies can cost less to make, so what? The movie industry hit some record profits not too long ago (regardless of what the MPAA reports).

Building a complex for the Department of Homeland Security is a bit more of a gray area. Let's assume that the department is going to stay, and no one hates it. It'd be nice for them to have a building (and furnished). It gets people some work, and it puts some money in circulation. That really doesn't do much for the people as just handing the contractor money to pay off his people. The building itself isn't necessary. The Department has been working without one anyway. What is the actual cost here? What else could that money have been spent on?

One of FDR's biggest accomplishments was improving infrastructure. This created some short term jobs, injected money into circulation, and has been a large benefit to people for years. Currently, America's infrastructure is crumbling. I know that here in rural PA that there are some old utility poles that are leaning against the new ones, roads that could definitely use some patching, and a very poor public transportation system. I'm fully aware that these are actually issues for the state and not the country, but I think increasing the states highway fund for use on infrastructure will do much more than building an elaborate building for Homeland Security.

BTW, who were you listening to this morning btw?

npr, 990am ("intelligent conservative radio") on the radio.
Fox and Friends/Morning Joe on the Tube.

I'll readily concede that there's a lot of projects that are questionable. But since the term pork is so ill-defined, you can call damn near ANY spending pork. Obama said something really honest yesterday, "Spending is stimulus. That's the whole point!" If the narrative were focused, as yours is, on the merits of individual plans and on the potential for other, better projects, then I'd be quite happy with things.

/If movies are made, then people will go to the movies, and spend money on tickets, snacks, arcade games, and probably a night out before or after... This was more or less the rationale given when it was brought up in the house. This point (and many others) were quietly accepted by both parties.

/I think giving the DHS a permanent home is the biggest mistake of the package. That's an actual policy decision and I strongly disagree with its implications.

Pew pew in your politic sauce!

New article on the matter. It has some more updated numbers and it reflects my general misgivings about the nature of republican complaints.

I think there is going to be one large fundamental difference between trying to create jobs now and creating jobs during FDR's days. The vast majority of the jobs created then and created now by things like infrastructure are/were blue collar jobs. The majority of the jobs being lost now, with the possible exception of housing construction, are white collar jobs. I don't think you're going to see a lot of bankers going off and a building Blue Ridge Parkway 2.0. I just don't see a whole lot of projects being feasible that can be funded to employ people losing their jobs now.

I definitely do not think that is true; did you find that statistic somewhere? When companies talk about laying off tens of thousands of employees, they're not talking about getting rid of their accountants. We can all argue the pros and cons of trickle down economics, but one thing that isn't arguable is that shit always trickles down.

I'm not saying that white collar jobs aren't being lost, but I suspect their losses are still dwarfed by that of blue collar America.

The theory, regardless of which way you argue it, is that if you create enough blue collar jobs, then a necessary proportion of white collar jobs will naturally arise from it. White collar America relies on the money spent by blue collar workers.

I don't think that the stimulus package is a great idea.....but thats just me.

I see the arguements for and against it.

Don't get me wrong, I think it is an awful idea. I just don't think the basis of Pheylan's assumption is accurate.

I have absolutely no facts to back this up, its all theory.

The way I see it, and from talking to friends in the banking industry in Charlotte, the headquarters for Wachovia and Bank Of America, it's not your blue collar workers being laid off. It is the accountants, advertising guys, random cubicle Joe, etc that are getting laid off because they have more then they need. I can only speak for Charlotte because that's what I know, but it is trickle down economics. The white collar workers are the ones losing their jobs and not spending money on the products that the blue collar workers produce. It works the other way around as well of course.

Like I said, this is theory. But I see a whole, whole lot more white collar workers losing or worried about losing their jobs. I work in liquor stores all across the county that Charlotte is in and I see people from every aspect of life. I can only speak on personal experiences.


Court, you may be right that the blue collar jobs lost are greater then those being lost by white collar workers. My original point was that today as compared to 80 years ago, there are a much larger percentage of white collar works losing their jobs today then their were then because todays workforce of white collar workers in America is much higher then it was during the Great Depression. FDR's projects catered to blue collar jobs. Trying to do similar work projects today just won't work. Joe Banker isn't going to go start doing road construction. I do think you could create enough jobs to employ everyone, but I don't think that those jobs would be the sorts that people would do for various reasons, whether it be pride, money, or whatever.

My opinion differs. I think Joe Banker would do road construction. If Joe can get a job doing something else, then he can do that. If he can't get a job anywhere, he won't sit on his ass and starve. He'll do what needs to be done to support himself and his dependents.

Apart from the idea that if there are white collar workers being laid off because they aren't needed, that those are the jobs that need to be created being ... kind of nuts... here are the facts that you couldn't be bothered to google.
Job Loss By Sector (1st google entry btw)


more numbers from that report:
Construction lost 111,000 jobs in January.
Manufacturing employment fell by 207,000 in January
Total nonfarm payroll employment fell sharply (-598,000) in January.
Employment in financial activities declined by 42,000 over the month
The temporary help industry lost 76,000 jobs in January.
and interestingly
Health care employment continued to trend up in January with a gain of 19,000.

And if Joe Banker doesn't want to pick up the slack and dig ditches then Joe Banker can let his family starve. His call I guess.

Perhaps the nitpickiest of lists about the bill you'll ever see.



I guarantee that this is the publication that will be calling whatever they think they can convince their readers of "pork".

And it passed the Senate.

Roll Call.

Arlen Spector Voted Yea, for all you PA folks.

Nice and bi-partisan.

This stimulus package is nonsense. I am ashamed that our congress would be so fundamentally irresponsible. I may even go as far as to say this is the single greatest irresponsible act in the history of this country. It kind of makes me sick to my stomach just thinking about it.

However, do you know what I can't fucking stand even more than this god awful bill the irresponsible democrats pushed through, and their selfish constituents that think they deserve my money because they are financially inept? The worthless, hypocritical, actually borderline-retarded republican congressmen and their constituents who think entirely fucking trivial concerns are grounds to derail an entire policy they would otherwise whole-heartily support as not only beneficial but [in their opinion] absolutely essential to save this country from economic collapse.

Whether I agree with the bill or not, this has clearly been an example of republicans playing the game instead of doing what they truly believe is the right course of action. They don't disagree with this bill, they disagree with a marginal portion of this bill that they can't even ultimately say will fail at stimulating jobs, but believe there is a possibility they won't be an effective stimulus. Well, that is immediately. You see, they're also apparently upset that this whole god damn mess that has been a culmination of decades of failures compounded upon other failures will not be fixed by the calendar year 2010. So they're either all suffering from severe mental retardation, or they've got their heads so far up their own political ass they can't even identify [what they should see as] a good thing right in front of them.

If you're a conservative who has any respect for why this country exists, please join us in hating this shitty bill and wishing the rest of America didn't choke on a dick when it came to making responsible decisions.

But if you believe the country needs a near-trillion dollar shot in the arm (which far more than 75% of the current republican congressmen do), then don't fucking hold up the feel-good bus because you're upset that a mere fraction of the total cost of the bill might not stimulate your nuts enough. Either disagree with the intent of the bill on principle, or suck up your minuscule transgressions and actually do your fucking job. One way or another, have a god damn spine you insignificunts.

I like Court.

Yeah, it's kind of dickish for the Republicans to demand a 300% increase in the tax cutes in the bill (worth 200 billion dollars) then get it in bipartisan negotiations with democratic leadership, then turn around and say that they can't vote yes on this bill because of a little over 20 billion dollars in spending they disagree with. That is, in fact, pretty partisan.

And yeah. Court's a smart fellow. And a fancy lad.

I like tax cutes.

Yeah. Most Repubs in office are bitter. It sad that they are playing the victims, because that rarely improves the situation.

The stimulus will make things get slightly better for a while. What happens afterwards is up for discussion. Seems each school of economics has something different to say about it.

edit: I've been looking for something like this for a while. Adam Smith on the cause of the crisis.

oops.

Meanwhile, that article wasn't by Adam Smith, but PJ O'Rourke... which makes it much more pleasant to read.

Right but it was about what Adam Smith wrote... It's hard to find an article about current issues literally written by a man who died in 1790.

My problem at the moment..and I have not kept up on this nearly as enough as you guys have is that people how no clue what they are talking about. No one really knows what is going on...so why are we in such a hurry to throw money at it? I am trying to think of a situation where throwing money at a problem randomly does a better job than doing some critical thinking before hand.

Sure, money may be needed..but why are we having a bunch of politicians, who don't necessarily know a lot about how the economy works, argue over how much tax should go here and how much spending should go there, when maybe the whole bill should be thought in a different way. Its as if everyone is just blind and are fighting what each party thinks they should be fighitng for.

I have watched the news a few minutes everyday, and everyday I a seem to turn the channel when this Senator from Minnesota comes on. All she talks about is infracstruce and how this issue is finally being taken care of and how it is so important for this bill to pass for that reason. Sure bridges do need to be fixed, but she is speaking as though that is good enough reason to pass this bill..she seems to focus more on getting money for causes she wants taken care, more than putting the bill through on the basis of what it is meant to do.

Meanwhile Obama goes around the country making speeches. I would rather he stay at the white house..tell us what is going on through this magical box called a TV and then get back to work.

blarg

I think you may be paying just enough attention to the situation to get that impression. A TON of critical thinking and consultation with economists (who by the way also seem to have no idea what the fuck happened/why/how/when... etc) went into this bill. That's one of the reasons it's taken so long.

Nobody knows how the economy works though, even the people in the industry are flailing around in desperation, but we can sure tell when it breaks.

And it's certainly not just 100% throwing money at stuff for the hell of it. There's plenty of that in there to be sure, but most of the bill is tax cuts and infrastructure. We have lost 3.5 million jobs in this country in the past 6 months. January saw nearly 600k jobs disappear. If this continues unchecked (which is what a lot of morning talk shows are all about this week for some reason) then that is going to just keep happening. If you'd like to see all the charts about the New Deal vs. unemployment, I'll be happy to provide them. Spending on domestic projects = less unemployment. Lower interest rates = easier lending. It would be preferable to do both, but we spent the last 6 years or so passing money around for free, so we can't lower interest rates any further. So more spending is needed to achieve the same level of stimulus.

Keynes... not a dumb fellow.

I believe that she is focusing on that, because it is one of the things that they did in the New Deal. It showed some promise back then. It lowers unemployment and has lasting benefit. If the government is going to be spending money, this is something that is at least beneficial to nearly everyone.

..................SNEAK ATTACK!

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=30697

$6 billion for university building projects
$15 billion for boosting Pell Grant college scholarships
$4 billion for job-training programs, including $1.2 billion for “youths” up to the age of 24

While at first glance this looks like pork, I'd be inclined to qualify that as long term stimulus. The more highly educated your workforce is, the more economic activity that generally follows. A favored example to point at lately is Japan and their "lost decade" where they tried to spend their way out of a recession. While it didn't work very effectively, they did get one number that says Education was a worthwhile expenditure as it has one of the higher "Returns on Investment" in terms of GDP growth. They estimate the RoI to have been along the order of 1.8 Yen for every Yen they put in. (which would translate to 1.8 dollars for every dollar)

The digital converter coupons mentioned shouldn't be lumped as stimulus, and as such has no business being in the bill. But the "go digital" date was pushed back because the government ran out of money to pay for the $40 coupons for people needing/wanting the converter boxes. It was underfunded, and that money allocation is to correct that underfunding.

Into their "pure pork"
$4.5 billion for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

A lot of this is going toward levee maintenance/(re)construction. We have a massive backlog of levee work the Corps of Engineers is slated to do, I haven't looked it up yet, but as I recall in years passed, the number given was much larger than $5 Billion. So either you hold the position that the government isn't going to help with flood control in flood prone areas, or you help fund the government handling that task.

$850 million for Amtrak

Don't have detailed information on what this is intended for specifically within Amtrak. But if it has "Transit congestion relief" as one of its goals, its worth considering. Getting more people to use rail rather than drive their car helps relieve pressure(congestion) on the existing roadways and opens up other options. There are multiple ways to address problems, and this is one tool that should not be thrown out simply because its Amtrak.

$87 million for a polar icebreaking ship

They've been trying to get one for years, a lot of their icebreakers are (comparatively) ancient. They work, but they're getting increasingly expensive to maintain/operate as the parts needed to do so are no longer in production in large part. Also, believe it or not, there are significant shipping throughfares that need icebreakers to keep open. Either you make it easier/more cost effective for the Coast Guard to perform that task, or you rewrite their charter to get them out of performing that task, and watch commerce likely suffer as a result.

$1.7 billion for the National Park System

Depends on what they're spending on. Once again, plenty of absolutely ancient/poorly maintained facilities that either need to be repaired or outright replaced. We've been underfunding the NPS for ages, and they usually compensated by underfunding building maintenance. Once again, either you fund the NPS to do its job, or you get the government out of that job...

$55 million for Historic Preservation Fund
$7.6 billion for “rural community advancement programs”
$150 million for agricultural-commodity purchases
$150 million for “producers of livestock, honeybees, and farm-raised fish”

Ok, these are more in the realm of legitimate pork.

And on another tangent related to government backlogs with lots of potential to be called pork, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) pointed out something in late January about Highway/bridge construction in the United States:

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fus...75-4c1a9b8d07dd

...but generally, yeah, the "stimulus package" before congress is a joke. It won't accomplish what they're trying to do, and a lot of it isn't actually stimulus. It's funding stuff that either should have been funded already(digital converter boxes), or things related to the current recession increasing demand for certain services. (dramatically increased numbers of unemployed people = increased demand for unemployment benefits/medicare/medicaid/social security/etc)

What they can try to do is soften the landing somewhat, but we're still going to crash, and we haven't hit bottom yet.

The sad thing is that the US Government has been systematically short funding lots of stuff for decades now, and correcting the results of those systematic funding shortfalls(repair/replacement of long neglected buildings/facilities/transit systems) would provide a LOT of work for some time to come. Problem is correcting those backlogs will cost a lot of money.

DoT alone is sitting on half a trillion worth of backlogs. I seem to recall that as of 2006 the US Military was sitting on a building construction/maintenance backlog of over 100 Billion(and I imagine it has only become worse since then), the National Park Service has many facilities in extremely poor repair with estimated costs of repair/remediation/replacement running into the billions as well. I'm sure other agencies have facilities in likewise poor condition, or project backlogs that run up impressively large amounts of money.

I guess ignoring the existence of the bill online is sort of like it not existing online. (pdf warning)

Andrew - I'd like to see you comb through 800 pages in 10 hours, you jackass.

Your link:
My link: "Here is a copy of the latest version of the bill made available to the public yesterday, hours after the amendments were finalized."
You: "Who can read all those werds!?"

I'm not trying to be a jackass here. If you are gonna sling BS in a thread after saying "...... SNEAK ATTACK!", I'd say it's fair for you to expect to see a snarky response. The difference? Mine's reality based. Yours comes from The Conservative Underground.

Here's the Thomas Library version of the bill if Huffington Post gives you the vapors.

Again. Legitimate criticisms of the bill exist. I see no reason to peddle made up crap as a way to obstruct it...
/The length of the bill is a somewhat legit criticism. It just does nothing to advance the discussion, and makes you sound like you hate reading.

I would contend that our government no longer knows the meaning of the word critical thinking. To me the term critical thinking inherently implies looking at something, saying that its wrong, and saying that it needs to be changed, and that it needs to be better. That part is relatively easy in my opinion, both to grasp as a concept and execute, but still has not been seen in this countries government in an extremely long time. To any argument about the validity of what I just said, my response is that I'm tired of having the exact same shit shoved down my throat about American politics. Our government is getting to be a fucking old geezer, and I think that in order for U.S. to be what it is the next 50-100 years it needs to get drastically modernized into something the likes of which the world has never seen before.
And brings me to my next point about critical thinking. It also should imply something being done and implemented about the ideas that resulted from being critical. Again the line about getting the same shit over and over again in a vicious cycle from American politics. Watching the news is more like watching re-reruns.

What rubs me the wrong way about this bill is I can't see at all how this is anything more than Washington writing a check and handing it out. For some reason I see that idea working out better when your little brother or girlfriend need some extra money to pay for an unexpected trip to a car mechanic than jump starting a nations flailing economy.

Maybe I'm just on crack, but to everyone who is arguing the semantics of this bill, I just want to remind you that there is a larger scale of issues out there that need to be addressed. I have no idea if this bill is going to work or not. I'm hoping that it will, but I'm not getting my hopes up high. Even if this bill works out beautifully, things aren't going to be pretty the next 10 years, assuming that they are going to get better and not worse after that.

It's more like Washington writing several million checks and handing them out. I can't make heads or tails of that comparison, but I think I see your point. To that point I'd say that that is sort of what our government is doing. Giving out money to people to pay their mechanics is going to keep mechanics in business, no? And that mechanic is going to need parts, right? And food. And employees. Who will want TV's, and fancy stereos and iPods with their hard earned cash.

While the bank rescue plan was a zero sum game, this isn't. Government spends a crapload, people get paid a crapload, which they then spend as opposed to save, which generates tax revenue. The last one left a bad taste in our mouths as far as spending is concerned because that was a bottomless pit. Governement spends money and gets exactly bupkiss in return while the money is funneled to the 'game' s winner.

Obama's team just launched recovery.org

For those of you who may have forgotten. This is what it looks like when a guy expects to be held accountable for his decisions.

Well...that's a good start, but hardly an accomplishment in and of itself. He made great promises with his change.gov website, and I don't think he really delivered on them. Consider me a skeptic until I start seeing the spent dollars and cents actually being documented.

no doubt. I'm not gonna suck the guys dick over it or anything. It's just so refreshing to see our leadership even pretend to share information that I can't help but feel a little optimistic. Besides, the change.gov site was sort of useless. Nobody except his most ardent supporters and opponents cared about that site in any real capacity. I thought it was neat but checked it a grand total of 5 or 6 times. This is a bit different. This recovery plan has a lot of people's attention, so I imagine it'd be a little harder to under-deliver on this site. At the very least he'd receive a bunch of media scrutiny over it.

It's just a bit harder to only go halfway with this one, but you're absolutely right. We'll see.

Yey we get to look at a website and actually see how much money we waste! I don't know about you guys but I feel totally better now, and really think that Obama is everything he was supposed to be.

Oh wait...he just pushed through billions of dollars of spending in a huge rush, without reviewing one of the most important pieces of legislation ever, without the support of the the entire other party. So Obama keeps his promise on making a website(I could make a website) but becomes just like every other politician. Well he is just like every politician except he has a nice smile and likes to continue to talk like his on the campaign trail even though he isn't.

So
TARP - Failure...
Car Bailout - Failure
Stimulus Package - No outcome yet but I predict less than what they are expecting.
Save the homes bill - Lets not wait and see if we get three strikes and were out here..lets just assume that throw number three was a home run and keep spending.


Awesome. I really feel much better.

This post could be way less annoying and still get the point across.

I don't like you.

If you don't see the difference between spending a trillion dollars on bankers and spending a trillion dollars on roads then I guess I can understand being pissed off about more spending as a sort of reactionary response.

But hey. If you can find a way to be upset that our president and his advisors are making an effort to share information with us then that's your prerogative.

This issue is separate from the package itself... in other words.