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US House OKs Obama's IT stimulus

The U.S. economic stimulus bill espoused by President Obama - and a bunch of IT luminaries hoping to benefit from spending on infrastructure projects - was approved yesterday by the House and will now move on to the Senate. The president used the occasion to invite some IT heavy hitters to the White House for a roundtable …

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Brandon
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it's not a "stiimulus"

Obama is a master of PR. This is not an "economic stimulus package" as used the previous year by Bush, where everyone gets a check for $600 to go spend, thus "stimulating" the economy. This is simply a spending bill. What really gets me about it is that $350bil. of it won't be spent until 2010, which just happens to be an election year... you do the math. Yay for socialism... I was really getting tired of being rewarded for all my hard work...

Anonymous Coward
Flame

You can be a Republican...

The Republicans have spent the last 8 years running the country (and the world) into the ground, and yet they still think that they have all of the answers. Its time for them to clear out of the way and let O'Bama clean up the mess they've made of the economy, but no, they hate America (just like many of the commentariat here at the Reg) too much.

You can be a Republican, or you can be an American (I've wanted to say that for 8 years).

The flames for consigning the Repugnicans to.

Mark Randall
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Ahhh Republicans

They will never learn.

Heff
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"stimulous" checks!

proponents of indivduals getting a check to spend on whatever they like are idiots. a responsible person slaps it on their credit card debt, and an iresponsible person uses it as a downpayment on a bigger television, neither of which does fuck all to help "the economy" Bushes tax-refund checks were the most shockingly obvious buying-your-vote crap I have EVER seen.

also, please check : its 825bill, not 8.25

Simon Painter

@Brandon

What do you think economic stimulus is, idiot? First of all here's what it isn't:

It's not giving tax breaks and cheques (note the correct spelling) to everyone indiscriminately. If you do that then they will just go buy a Japanese car and stimulate the Japanese economy.

It's not about bailing out the banks and the car companies, if their business model sucks they have to get it in order or else they will be cap in hand asking for more money in a few months.

Economic stimulus is about the government using public funds to improve infrastructure, improve education (and specifically the nations ability to compete for jobs). Economic stimulus is about improving the infrastructure (which previous governments from both side of the house have not invested in and preferred to run down). Economic stimulus is about giving tax breaks to American companies which create jobs to benefit hard working American families. Essentially it is about playing the long game and making long term commitments to the country to improve the situation for the current generation and those that come after.

Compare that with the UK where we are still ruled by an idiot who spent the last decade making his predecessor look good only to find himself holding the turd when the music stopped. We have a PM who is desperately fucking up the future in the vain hope that he can persuade enough people to vote for him when the inevitable election comes around.

Andy Bright

Yes, we all know how well that went

Yes, giving everyone a few hundred dollars has certainly helped prevent the mother of all economic disasters, thank god Bush was in charge or something bad might have happened.

Funny, but what I saw was shortly after these stimulus checks were spent, the economy tanked into an even worse position. Because oddly the answer to fixing a deficit is not to allow greedy investment bank executives to do as they please or to give rich CEOs huge tax cuts - which were the other key components of the bills that gave the plebs a few hundred bucks to spend.

In fact most of the Republicans argued that giving working people any sort of tax cut at all was not required, and that all of the money should be handed to rich CEOs. After all this way we were assured that they would re-invest into the economy, providing more jobs and further growth and therefore bigger tax returns. Wonderful how well that has gone. Hardly a day goes by now without some great news on the job front.

And they also told us all that regulation was stifling the economy. You know pointless red tape - like making sure that people actually had the money to repay those obscene mortgages. So best to get rid of that too, and boy hasn't the economy done well because of it.

So yeah, we can thank the Bush Administration for doing a truly awesome job on the economy.

David Wilkinson

Checks vs Jobs

All that money is going into projects that will have to hire lots of workers, who will then pay taxes and inject their paycheck into the economy while doing something that might benefit this country.

Giving people the ability to earn money is always better than giving them money.

I also believe that an unbalanced distribution of wealth is bad for the economy. Workers need to be able to purchase the goods they are producing or the whole system falls apart.

Kevin
Paris Hilton

Excuses

The guise of a "stimulus" package are merely excuses for getting a boat load of socialist spending through Congress. Look at some of the projects. Anti-smoking campaigns (no new jobs), birth control measures (no new jobs, fortunately this one was pulled yesterday for its idiocy). These are a couple of the more ridiculous "stimulus" plans proposed. Half of them won't create too many jobs, and almost all of them will create ZERO permanent jobs. I seem to remember the democrats criticizing Bush's job creation a few years ago as "short term jobs" that will go away when the job is done. This is the majority of Obama's "stimulus" plan.

$350B in bad decisions, with another $350B blank check waiting. Add in another $825B and we have a $1.5T mistake, when the economy will be no better off because of it. The free market always corrects itself. It did so in 2000-2002 when the dot com bubble burst. It did so again when the socialist tinkering with mortgages blew up in everyone's face and burst the housing bubble in 2007-2008. The worst things that can be done is putting the government in charge of anything, and now the US government pretty much owns half the banks in the country, and is about to be given free will to waste more taxpayer dollars to try and "fix" it. The best way to fix anything is to keep the government bureaucracy out of it. $2 go in, $1 comes out.

I'm just happy my job is safe, and I am in a growing company even still. My bonus will be fat, and intend to blow most of that on stocks. Recessions are just garage sales for rich people, and while I may not be rich, I can certainly get a piece of the pie as it recovers. And it will recover. Mike Tyson could be president and the economy would recover. The ONLY thing that can keep the free market down is the government crushing it by over taxation, over involvement/regulation in every aspect of lives, and redistribution of wealth.

Paris because we all need some eye candy.

James Powis

@Brandon

2010 is not a Presidential election year, 2012 is. 2010 is a voting year for some laws, regulations, and some political positions, but not Presidential.

TeeCee
Alert

That sniffing sound you can hear?

It's the sound of the big consultancies, who've been suckling at the teat of unfettered .gov.uk spending and bleeding the British economy white for years, detecting the scent of copious amounts of Pork being cooked up across the pond.

They'll do yer Healthcare computerisation and Broadband infrastructure planning for you. After all, they like a challenge and overrunning *that* budget is going to take some really imaginative work.

doublejay1973
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Like taking candy from a baby

mmmm......I can use the recession to reduce my work force....then when I get one of these government projects, I can resource it with low lost labour from around the world........I can make enough profit to shield my shareholders from this wretched "downturn"

Joe K
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No outsourcing prevention?

Sounds like more jobs for India then.

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