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Highlands Today

Doing Nothing Certainly Won't Stimulate The Economy

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 12, 2009

Can $780 billion stimulate our nation's economy? Let's pray that's the case, because right now we are in bad shape. Anyone who doesn't think our country isn't in dire straights hasn't been affected, at least not at a serious level where they are facing foreclosure or something worse. But they will be soon.

The original House stimulus plan was laden with silly things that should not be part of a stimulus package. Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats should be ashamed of some of the baloney they piled on that bill. It's exactly the kind of politics that Americans are sick of Republicans and Democrats doing - and both are guilty. The Republicans have been just as bad, wanting more tax cuts for wealthy people when it's been proven that idea does nothing but make the rich richer and hurts average Americans.

In the Senate, the bill was pared down, as it should have been. President Obama's critics will still jump up and down and claim he's ruining the country. Actually, he was handed a country nearly ruined by greed and lax regulation that allowed the rich to rob from the middle class. But being president is a tough job, and criticism comes with the territory.

It's hard to see how $780 billion spread across so many fronts can really make a difference, but do we have a choice? The desperation on so many American faces who are out of work, facing eviction, worrying about feeding their families makes most of us believe we must do something, anything, to at least blunt the trauma from this self-made disaster.

We won't know for some time whether this stimulus did what it was supposed to do. In fact, it's impossible to measure how many jobs won't be eliminated due to the stimulus. All we know for sure is that critics will keep fighting against it, even though they didn't have any trouble with throwing away hundreds of billions in deficit spending before Obama came into power.

Forget the political games, though. We're way past that now. We need help and the best minds say a stimulus is the best way to turn things around. Perhaps they're all wrong, but the alternative is doing nothing. That's not much of an alternative considering the condition of our country.

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