The real party of NO, the GOP, steps it up

[Riot]

[quote=Cannon Shell;729944]There is no use trying to talk sense to you and Riot because you just wont admit you dont know what you are talking about regardless of how much evidence there is to the contrary of your point[/QUOTE

Your insults are no substitute for trying to debate with facts, although you apparently think so, but it does seem the only thing you can routinely come up with.

Try harder. Throw some of those "facts" out yourself (btw, "fact" isn't just something you think is true)

[Danzig]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...T2010022404689

[Riot]

Unemployment checks help positively drive the economy. Applicable excerpts:

Even as Congress debates whether to extend emergency unemployment checks for more than 6 million Americans who are approaching the 99-week-limit, some four million others are facing the certain end of their benefits over the next year, unless an entirely new program is crafted.

This is the sobering conclusion of a report released by the President's Council of Economic Advisers on Thursday. The study forecast that the exhaustion of unemployment benefits for so many will curb spending power enough to significantly impede an already weak economic recovery.

Without an agreement to extend the program, the economy will lose about 600,000 jobs, as the spending enabled by continued unemployment checks ceases.

National economic output--which expanded at an annual pace of 2.5 percent during the summer months--would fall off by 0.6 percent.

That disturbing prospect does not even account for the roughly four million people who would exceed even the extended limits in the emergency program. Were that many jobless people left to fend themselves without unemployment checks, that would pose significant risks for the broader economy, say economists. They cite the fact that consumer spending accounts for roughly 70 percent of all economic activity.

"If you're looking for economic recovery supported by consumers, it's discouraging," said Henry J. Aaron, an economist at the Brookings Institution, a research institution in Washington. "It's drag on the economy."

Many economists argue that paying unemployment benefits is among the most effective ways the government can spur the economy: Jobless people tend to spend nearly all of their unemployment checks, distributing those dollars throughout the economy.

"There's very few things we can spend money on that probably have such an immediate impact on household consumption as unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed," said Gary Burtless, a former Labor Department economist and now a fellow at Broookings.

More than 6.3 million workers were out of a job for at least 27 weeks in November, comprising nearly 42 percent of all unemployed Americans, according to Labor Department data released Friday.

The Federal Reserve forecasts that the unemployment rate will still be as high as 9 percent this time next year, and about 8 percent at the end of 2012, according to minutes from the central bank's Federal Open Market Committee meeting last month.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/1..._n_791682.html

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by Riot

Unemployment checks help positively drive the economy. Applicable excerpts:



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/1..._n_791682.html

good thing those checks help, considering todays jobs report......geez, just think if that expensive stimulus package wasnt helping.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Danzig

good thing those checks help, considering todays jobs report......geez, just think if that expensive stimulus package wasnt helping.

Most economists I've seen, and I'm being absolutely serious here, 'Zig, have said the stimulus absolutely helped, and we would have been in the second great depression without it. And that it should have been larger (why we are stuck now) In hindsight I've not seen any economist that said it didn't help.

[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by Riot

Most economists I've seen, and I'm being absolutely serious here, 'Zig, have said the stimulus absolutely helped, and we would have been in the second great depression without it. And that it should have been larger (why we are stuck now) In hindsight I've not seen any economist that said it didn't help.

You overstate this depression angle. I said that the stimulus wouldnt work last spring. Not because I am some economic genius but because a huge portion of the package wasn't really stimulus or at least wasn't very effective stimulus. The $20 billion for food stamps for example.

Look at it this way. A baseball team pays a free agent pitcher way more than he is worth (say $20 million a year) and he performs to his usual level(3 million a year). Did the player offer some value to the teams success at the end of the year? Sure, he was slightly better than average, but he didn't give the team the 20 million they paid him worth. The money could have been better spent. That was the stimulus package. It helped a little but not nearly as much as it could have had the money been directed more towards actual stimulus and less towards social programs disguised as stimulus.

When ANY dollar spent can be described as "good for the economy" it isn't hard to make the arguments that the left and Riot make. The problem is that it does matter where that money comes from.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Danzig

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...T2010022404689

The filibuster is only a parliamentary procedure of the Senate, and will definitely be changed due to current abuse in January. Not eliminated, but changed in application. Never has a party put an automatic filibuster on EVERYTHING before. It's appalling.

[Cannon Shell]

[quote=Riot;730071]

Originally Posted by Cannon Shell

There is no use trying to talk sense to you and Riot because you just wont admit you dont know what you are talking about regardless of how much evidence there is to the contrary of your point[/QUOTE

Your insults are no substitute for trying to debate with facts, although you apparently think so, but it does seem the only thing you can routinely come up with.

Try harder. Throw some of those "facts" out yourself (btw, "fact" isn't just something you think is true)