Tax Cuts and Stimulus

Yesterday, The Hill ran a story titled ‘Dem says tax cuts blunted the stimulus.’ In it, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar said that the tax cuts in the stimulus package took money away from legitimate infrastructure spending.

Frankly, I think the Chairman may have his facts confused. It was his Speaker, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid who took money away from infrastructure and gave it to other pork barrel-esqe spending proposals. Congressional Democrats larded up the bill with ridiculous spending measures all the while reducing the percentage of infrastructure spending. In terms of comparison, the President’s stimulus proposal and the final stimulus bill that was signed into law contained roughly the same proportion of tax cuts.

Many Republicans, this one included, would have been more inclined to support the stimulus package had it included more stimulative and shovel ready infrastructure projects that carried with them substantial multiplier effects. I, for one, was discussing the idea of national wireless internet infrastructure, but this idea along with many others was tossed aside for pork barrel spending projects like Speaker Pelosi’s salt marsh harvest mouse.

In the end it is the American people who foot the bill, and will be the ones feeling the pain.