Links and Minifeatures 2009 02 09 Monday

Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of Real Estate

Barely Bipartisan But a Senate Stimulus Deal is Done

votes in the Senate but several spending provisions that would not have kicked in until after 2011 drew fire from both sides of the aisle. Collins and Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, spent most of the week closeted with 18 centrists, including six Republicans, hammering out the deal reached late Friday. In the end only Collins, her fellow senator from Maine, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania signed on. Collins said she will continue to lobby her G.O.P. colleagues.

Hope they don't think they're any kind of hero cutting the waste from $890 billion to $780 billion, particularly as the bill would have died completely if they didn't sign on. Seven-eighths of the waste going to Democratic political patronage is still both counterproductive and money we should not spend.

More history of "stimulus" packages here: Once More, With Feeling

If you know Washington, you shouldn't be surprised that the real cost figure is much higher

$780 B (for base deal) $46.5 B (for amendments added during debate) $348 B (for debt service)

Total equals $1.175 Trillion

To put that in perspective, the total cost of House bill is $1.168 trillion ($820 billion for bill and $348 billion for debt service)

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says Obama stimulus harmful over long haul.

CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing.

Sometimes the CBO should be taken with much salt, like when it encourages things that the majority party in Congress likes. When it says things that the majority party doesn't like, however, it's always worth paying attention to.

There just isn't any benefit to passing this stimulus bill - unless you're one of those hoping for a payoff for supporting the Democrats in the election.

Top 10 Reasons to Oppose the Stimulus

In fact, there is no way to effectively monitor the "stimulus" for waste, fraud, and abuse

The stimulus plan presents a stark choice: The government can spend unprecedented amounts of money quickly in an effort to jump-start the economy or it can move more deliberately to thwart the cost overruns common to federal contracts in recent years.

"You can't have both," said Eileen Norcross, a senior research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center who studied crisis spending in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. "There is no way to get around having to make a choice."

For all the time I've spend bashing Democrats in the last couple of weeks though, here's one where I have to admit they did the right thing:

Democrats defeat GOP plan on mortgage rates

The plan by Nevada Republican John Ensign would have encouraged banks to issue mortgages with interest rates of 4 to 4.5 percent. The government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would have bought the mortgages on the secondary market. Jumbo loans would have been ineligible.

This plan might have sounded good for the country - until you thought about it. I'd certainly enjoy the money from refinancing everyone in my book of business, but it remains a bad idea. Exactly where is the money to do all of this going to come from? It's going to come from distortions of economic rewards and risks, and the taxpayers are going to foot the bill. Why should renters in Arkansas foot the bill so someone in California or New York City can have a $500,000 tax subsidized mortgage? Why should a renter in Montana foot the bill for (re) over-inflating prices in high demand areas? The conforming loan limits for the areas in California where everyone lives are significantly higher than the basic $417,000 limit for conforming loans.

The best thing the government can do is force businesses to tell the truth about their products, then get out of the way (I can also see forcing equal treatment regardless of race, sex, etcetera, but businesses that do not treat everyone equally suffer their own economic penalties - usually severe enough to put them out of business.). A significant portion of the blame for the current crisis falls to government policy that mandated lenders approve loan applications that otherwise would not have made the cut, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that the results were a larger number of foreclosures. It's not like there was any kind of grand conspiracy on the part of lenders to limit the number of people who would be allowed to get home loans. Lender's realize that The Mortgage Loan Market Controls the Real Estate Market, and the more people who are eligible for home loans, the more money they will lend out, and the greater the demand for it, which equates to price. The government's purpose was noble and good, but the damage would not have been nearly as bad without the government's poorly thought through good intentions. We all know what's paved with those.

Here's a direct payoff to the Unions that supported Obama: Gateway Pundit: Obama signs Executive Order preventing non-union companies from bidding on government construction

Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) today denounced an Executive Order signed by President Obama that repeals Executive Order 13202, that prohibited federal agencies and recipients of federal funding from requiring contractors to sign union-only project labor agreements (PLAs) as a condition of performing work on federal and federally funded construction projects.

I'm with RNC Chair Michael Steele on this one:

"President Obama's executive order will drive up the cost of government at a time when we should be doing everything possible to save taxpayer dollars. Federal contracts should go to the businesses that can offer taxpayers the best value - not just the unions who supported the Democrats' campaigns last year. Quietly signing executive orders to payback campaign backers undermines Obama promise to change Washington. It is a disappointment for Americans hoping for more transparency and less politics as usual in Washington."

Obama never promised his change would be for the better. Details count.

This is pure political opportunism:
Obama Puts Census Under Rahm Emanuel's Control

Now, why would Rahm Emanuel want the Census under his control in the White House? Huh? Why might that be? "The census is used to allocate federal aid to states and draw electoral districts," the New York Times editorial board wrote in order to REMIND PRESIDENT OBAMA that he might not want a REPUBLICAN in charge of drawing "electoral districts." Good god almighty. So now Obama's administration has decided that they'll do the census themselves.

Making the census a political tool? All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others

Suppose the Bush Administration had put Karl Rove in charge of the census

Where's The Film About Our Real Superheroes?

We cannot escape but we still haven't developed the guts to tell stories about what's really going on. We're afraid to call the evil to account and we're afraid to call our own sons and daughters the real heroes.

Michael Totten: A Dispatch from the Border with Gaza

Cure for the Obama hangover

I don't drink, but I am reliably informed by medical practitioners and those who do drink that in order for any hangover cure to be effective, you've got to stop consuming alcohol long enough for it to work.

Unfortunately, we're now on steady Obama feed that's going to last nearly four more years.