When House Democrats return to Washington on Monday, a top priority will be putting a $250 dollar check in the mail to 58 million Social Security recipients.Democrats plan to vote early in the lame-duck session on a bill that would provide Social Security recipients with a one-time payment, according to the office of Earl Pomeroy, a Democrat from North Dakota who authored the legislation.
"The bill -- with a total cost of roughly $14 billion"
ReplyDeleteThis bill needs to die like the last one. We are up to our eyeballs in debt. Ben needs to turn off the printing press.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k
I think politically they should have done this before the election. But I'm not that keen on it. I'd rather see the Making Work Pay tax credit extended another year, and as part of that they could offer $250 to SS recipients as they did in 2009.
ReplyDeleteSeparately, I think they ought to consider changing the index used for COLAs to one geared toward retirees (which would probably be higher than the CPI-W used now).
As long as the economy is in a slump, the gov't needs to spend, or we'll never get out.
"As long as the economy is in a slump, the gov't needs to spend, or we'll never get out."
ReplyDelete"In May of 1939 Roosevelt’s own Treasury Secretary admitted that the runaway spending had been a failure. “We are spending more than we have ever spent before,” said Henry Morgenthau, “and it does not work…We have just as much unemployment as when we started…and an enormous debt to boot!”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88156284
Another lesson from Japan: Don't try to spend your way out of an economic trough. Japan ramped up government spending on public works projects, including bridges and river "improvement" programs that literally lined many waterways with cement. But it didn't work, and today the only evidence of this spending binge is the ugly slabs of cement that mar the Japanese countryside.