The ARRA bill has passed both the House and the Senate. Now it goes to the president’s desk for signing, and then it will be ready to go. Remember, you can go to recovery.gov to follow the actual details of the bill, and how it is enacted. Since the bill is not signed, the web site is still in the stand-by mode.
As I’ve said before, I am disappointed in the final version of the bill. Those of us in real estate, and I am guessing those who create loans for home buyers, too, are disappointed that we lost the expected $15,000 credit for home buyers. The final version of the bill with the $8,000 credit for first time home buyers is probably better than nothing, but still is a disappointment. Perhaps Tim Geithner will give us better news concerning housing in the days to come. We are expecting to hear something in regard to housing any day now.
What we need to keep in mind is that the ARRA is a first step in a long series of steps we are going to need to take to make a recovery in this economic crises. I know that we citizens of the USA are not used to thinking in the long term. We much prefer instant results, and instant gratification. I wonder if we have the patient endurance we need to stay the course toward recovery, and keep our hope alive for better days ahead.
My state of Washington is expecting $4 billion as our portion of the stimulus spending. The Olympian newspaper says that the biggest piece of that $4 billion will go toward Medicaid. This money will help us keep some of the health care and human services our governor expected to cut from our state budget. Another $1.8 billion is planned for the Hanford cleanup project. Our poor state has been trying to clean up the Hanford area for years now. As you may know back in World War II, in the 1940’s, Hanford was the location for producing plutonium. Radioactive iodine was released into the air, and “downwinders” suffered from exposure. Contaminated milk, fruits and other foods also made people ill. We didn’t know any better back in those days. Hanford made the plutonium that was in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
After the war the facilities in Hanford continued to produce plutonium. Plans to begin cleaning up the dangerous waste began all the way back in 1958 — and continue today. Maybe we can finally get the job done.
$500 million is to go toward other state and local projects. We are supposed to get about 75,000 jobs out of our portion of the stimulus spending. We wonder if this will be enough of a jump start to our economy to get things moving again. We just have to wait and see.
If the banks continue to hold tight to their money, and not make loans, our housing market is going to continue to have problems. For example, I have a friend who is planning to move into a new home in a development up north. The builder had completed phase one, but but now has run into a snag — no financing for phase two! There are people who want to buy and move into the builders new development, but no financing available to make this possible. My friend has a condominium that she would prefer to sell, but if she moves to the new home up north, she will instead rent it out. And thus it goes — until the banks change.
I think president Obama will need to repeat the words he said today over and over again:
This morning, I’m reminded of words President Kennedy spoke in another time of uncertainty. “Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.”
America, we will prove equal to this task. It will take time, and it will take effort, but working together, we will turn this crisis into opportunity and emerge from our painful present into a brighter future. After a week spent with the fundamentally decent men and women of this nation, I have never been more certain of that. Thank you.
As I’ve said before, we are not a patient people. My concern is that the republicans who are preparing to run for office against the bill will be constantly harping on it, and trying to pile on the negatives. And the corporate media will cooperate and also focus on the negatives, until people will begin to lose faith and lose heart. I really dislike when our representatives put politics before country.
Now a word on taxes. I am not happy that such a large portion of the ARRA is in the form of tax cuts. I don’t need that $13 a month in tax cuts as much as I need an economic recovery that works. We hear the republicans call the democrats “tax and spend” democrats, and they are always calling for more tax cuts, and more tax cuts.
In our own budgets we know how it works. We have those same choices. If we have increased costs for running our homes — like having to replace the roof on our house — we have to generate more income, or we have to cut back on what we are spending. To gain more income we can get a new job that pays more, ask our boss for a raise, sell something of value, take on a second job — or we can borrow. Borrowing is something we have learned to do because it has become difficult to generate more income in the usual ways. Our boss refuses to give us a raise, we can’t find a new job that pays more, we can’t take on the second job because of family obligations, we’ve nothing left to sell, so we borrow. We create debt to pay for the new roof, and intend to pay for it later. Most of us would rather have a way to generate more income, and not get into debt — if we had the choice. Since many of us are already living pay check to pay check just to stay even, we can’t find anything more to cut. So we borrow.
When the past administration decided to go to war in Iraq and increased our expenditure by $10.3 billion per month, and in Afghanistan by $2 billion a month, there was no plan on how we the people were going to pay for this new expense. Instead we borrowed the money, getting further and further in debt. It amazes me that the republicans who are complaining daily on TV and other media that we can’t afford the money we plan to spend for the recovery of our economy made no complaints whatsoever about spending $410 million dollars a day on war. They still don’t even mention the cost of the war. (Who is getting rich from the war, is another thing I’d like to know. Because we are paying that borrowed money to someone, who is putting it in his or her pocket). Go to Iraq Insider to see more on the costs of the wars.
The logical thing to do when you need more money for a project (like a war) is to increase the income so you can pay for it. Instead the last administration CUT our income. Now to me this is the height of foolishness — to cut income at the same time you increase spending. If you look back at what happened under president Reagan, who really began the economic crisis we are undergoing today, and began the dissolution of the middle class, you will see that when he cut taxes on the new economic royalists so they could get richer he found a deficit in what we needed for the general budget. He handled that by changing the way we collect money for social security, and then began borrowing from that fund for the general budget. In this way he was able to hide the growing problem with spending more than we were taking in. Of course, now we have a serious problem with social security. Under the last administration the policy of borrowing continued. Instead of removing the tax cuts on the economic royalists, who are rich already, that administration chose to cut taxes more and as a result, borrow more. Borrow and spend. Borrow and spend. We just can’t keep that up.
The republicans like to accuse the democrats of being “tax and spend” democrats. Well duh…. taxing is the way we get the income that we spend on running our country! We need to begin letting people know what the republicans prefer. They are “borrow and spend” republicans. They prefer to borrow money now, and leave it to a different administration to figure out how to get out of debt.
The new administration under president Obama has inherited a nightmare of debt, an economic crisis that threatens to bring catastrophe to the least amongst us, and two ongoing wars that continue to drain our finances. I am unhappy that such a large portion of the ARRA bill (because the republicans insisted) is going to cutting our income at the very time that we need to spend more. It just makes no common sense at all. You have to collect taxes in order to have an income — taxes are the source of our country’s income. Let’s get real. We need to stop being a “borrow and spend” country. It is time to increase our income by removing those tax cuts that decreased our income.
Well, now you know… I am on the progressive side of the continuum. I want to see a growing middle class, getting stronger every year. Having a 2% group of people at the top of the economic heap is not my idea of a great country. It is the middle class who make for a great democracy — and they are the ones who buy and sell the houses that most of us in real estate work with. Did you know that a middle class has to be created, and that it is not the “natural way of the world?” One of these days I’ll post something on that issue.
Tags: arra, Hanford, housing, jobs, middle class, recovery, stimulus, taxes
