Tornado Alley (PROG)

[wbmw]

oh I understand perfectly, and that is the problem. The more hands in the pie the less pie gets to the people. Stimulus = More Government. More Moral Hazard, Big Government, take care of yo buddy fraud, and bureaucrat bleed off waste! I just believe that leaving money in the hands of workers and their employers will produce the activity that we need NOW, not more bail outs for Big Business or even States.

I don't think you understand, HGE. How do you expect the money to get disbursed? Here's a bill worth $787 billion, and it's going to 10s of thousands of ricipients. I know that if I were in charge, I couldn't possibly write all those checks myself, let alone determine for myself how the money could best be spent. In fact, I would probably work out a system in which the money gets distributed on a high level to a number of departments under my control, and each of those departments would then divvy up their share to the next level of hierarchy, and when the amount of money became manageable, the final level of hierarchy would distribute it in pieces that could be tracked, monitored, and made transparent.

And if you'll look, that's precisely what the Recovery Act did. It distributed the money to all the major governmental departments (Education, Transportation, Energy, etc.), and each of those departments distributed their share to the various state departments (California Dept of Education, New York Dept of Education, etc.). Then those state departments distributed their share to district schools, which in turn spent the money on school supplies, computers, and other means of education.

It couldn't be simpler or made more robust, secure, and responsible. All of the money has been made transparent via Recovery.org, so if you find fraud, abuse, or mismanagement, you can report it. You might want to start using your own zip code and look at where it's being spent in your own neighborhood. You don't need to be a watchdog for the entire country, but you may be interested in the effect it's having around you.

Let them learn to cut spending and balance their budgets. I heard a speech from the head of Education last week and he said, yes stimulus had saved teacher jobs but if he could get the Federal Government out of thier business he could eliminate enough jobs soley to report report report, there would be plenty left over for long term teacher pay raises.....

You may be referring to, "No Child Left Behind," a Bush policy in which standardized test scores determined teacher pay and child aptitude, except that in practice it created a lot of overhead, and the standardization of tests did not allow for many special cases in which the child was completely competent in the class, but did not test well.

By the way, just to set the record straight, the Democrats fought against this program for these exact reasons. I'm not trying to be partisan here, but it's worth pointing out that if we let the Democrats pass legislation, it just might be what's needed for this country, as history should have taught us by now.