True Cost of Stimulus: $3.27 Trillion- CBO

BirdGuano · 02-13-2009, 01:02 PM

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/02/12/...-327-trillion/

All of the major news outlets are reporting that the stimulus bill voted out of conference committee last night has a meager $789 billion price tag.

This number is pure fantasy. No one believes that the increased funding for programs the left loves like Head Start, Medicaid, COBRA, and the Earned Income Tax Credit is in anyway temporary.

No Congress under control of the left will ever cut funding for these programs. So what is the true cost of the stimulus if these spending increases are made permanent?

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) asked the Congressional Budget Office to estimate the impact of permanently extending the 20 most popular provisions of the stimulus bill. What did the CBO find?

As you can see from the table below, the true 10 year cost of the stimulus bill $2.527 trillion in in spending with another $744 billion cost in debt servicing. Total bill for the Generational Theft Act: $3.27 trillion

sandyd · 02-13-2009, 01:06 PM

I saw COBRA assistance good for 9 months and since COBRA is good for 18 months, either they extend the help or will change the whole medical insurance system within 9 months.

(Or they think everything will be better in 9 months

)

Sysiphus · 02-13-2009, 01:08 PM

And this is assuming that US Gov't will continue to be able to pay 3% on long-term bonds, which is horse puckey. And it does not account for the fact that the gov't will have to incur further deficits to pay the interest on those bonds. Unless they project that the gov't is going to clean up it's act and pay off the deficit completely by the end of 10 years, they should be running the figures with the assumption that the $2.5 trillion will be a permanently outstanding obligation of the U.S. govt. In other words, the cost is more like $10 trillion or even more.

Sonny · 02-13-2009, 05:06 PM

BirdGuano · 02-13-2009, 09:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sonny

What did the CBO find?

One hell of a hangover from the Clinton-Greenspan Dot-com/Real-estate mega bubble.

Combine Bush 1 spending, Clinton bubble crash, and Bush 2 mega-spending, and we were doomed from the start.