This health care bill is so anti-free market, you know Democrats had to create it. At least we have the Republicans to fight for the free market… or something like that.

The danger for Republicans is that their delay tactics begin to look like political opportunism and they appear to obstruct a bill that contains some popular elements such as restrictions on health insurers.

In the give and take on the Senate floor, where the bill will be debated in December, Republicans hope to drive a wedge among Democrats, potentially peeling off centrists on key issues. Republicans also hope to force attention to their own proposals for changing health care, such as limiting medical-malpractice claims and enhancing the ability of small businesses to buy insurance.

“I think people will be more comfortable with us biting off what we can chew instead of this arrogance, thinking we can fix the whole system all at once,” Mr. Alexander said.

via For GOP, Health Is Only One Battle on Road to ’10 Elections – WSJ.com.

OK, so Republicans aren’t for the free market either, they just aren’t as anti-free market as the Democrats. Limiting medical malpractice should not be something the Federal government does. If anyone should pass tort reform, it should be state legislatures. This would cause competition amongst states for doctors and would ultimately lead to a better solution. States would try out different reforms. They could look at each other’s examples and learn from the mistakes and successes. Instead, Republicans believe in a one size fits all plan.

Also, enhancing the ability of small businesses to buy insurance will not fix the rising health care costs. Having businesses in the health care insurance purchasing business is one reason for the increasing costs. Republicans need to get back to the free market ideas and remove the incentives for businesses to provide insurance. Then consumers would be in charge of their health care. HSAs were the right way to go, and more than likely consumers would move towards HSAs if government would stay out of the business of promoting health insurance.

At least Republicans aren’t looking to take over our health care, but it sure would be nice if someone was fighting for the free market in Washington.

Would someone please ask the government to stop creating jobs before we are all unemployed? Most of these idiots never even held a real private sector job, and yet they are trying to create jobs. Government can only do one thing. It can take money from private citizens at the point of a gun and give it to other private citizens. That will not create jobs.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said in an interview that “there are two engines to our economic message, two ways to generate jobs. One is small business, the second is energy.” The government could promote hiring in those sectors through expanded tax credits or lending. “It’s not about legislation — it’s about the economy,” he said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week said ideas under discussion in the House included a tax on a variety of financial transactions. Democrats estimate such a tax could raise as much as $150 billion a year, a pool of money that could help offset the cost of a job-growth package.

via Weighing Jobs and Deficit – WSJ.com.

I love these idiots in the White House and Congress. How is small business and energy going to create jobs when you are pillaging both of them, Rahm. Small business  is going to get hammered with all these health care bills. Energy is not allowed to flourish in our country because of special interest groups. The government is pushing cap n trade, while  the sham of global warming has finally come to light with the hacked emails of global warming scientists. Cap n Trade will drive up costs on businesses and families. Congress is also raising taxes for the health care bill, and they are going to let Bush’s tax cuts expire. All of this leads to increased burdens on the private sector, but some how these morons see this as job creating stimulus.

Nancy Pelosi’s solution to job creation is to tax a variety of financial transactions? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. For some reason, she believes you can tax your way to prosperity. Why do we tax cigarettes again? Oh yeah, because we want people to smoke less. You tax something in order to punish it and get less of it. So Nancy Pelosi wants to tax financial transactions. What do you think is going to happen? You are going to get less financial transactions. That sounds like another great job creating idea.

Would someone pull the plug on Washington already. They have no clue how jobs are created. Please make them stop before everyone is out of work, and we’re relying on these morons for the bread lines.

This sure doesn’t sound good, and I’m sure the heath care bill only makes the chances of collapse more likely.

In a report entitled “Worst-case debt scenario”, the bank’s asset team said state rescue packages over the last year have merely transferred private liabilities onto sagging sovereign shoulders, creating a fresh set of problems.

Overall debt is still far too high in almost all rich economies as a share of GDP (350pc in the US), whether public or private. It must be reduced by the hard slog of “deleveraging”, for years.

via Société Générale tells clients how to prepare for ‘global collapse’ – Telegraph.

Bob Murphy is an awesome free market economist. I’ve learned a ton from his book “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism” and his blog Free Advice. In this video he explains why the Fed is harming the economy instead of helping bring us out of recession.

If you don’t think this health care bill is all about government control, you are very, very naive. The only head way that has been made on addressing rising cost has been the HSA and it’s brethren. These plans have brought the consumer back into the spending decision and allowed the price signals of the free market to work. We should be expanding and encouraging these plans, but low and behold, Harry Reid is trying to destroy them.

Start with its attack on flexible spending accounts that are an important part of many employer plans. Flex accounts let employees set aside some portion of their pre-tax pay for out-of-pocket costs or medical services that their insurance plan doesn’t cover, such as a child’s orthodontics or testing supplies for diabetics. The Reid bill caps these now-unlimited accounts at $2,500 per year and imposes new restrictions on qualifying medical expenses, raising some $5 billion by exposing income above the non-indexed cap to taxes.

Democrats say flex accounts encourage wasteful spending, because an arbitrary “use it or lose it” rule doesn’t allow balances to roll over year to year. But they really hate them because they give consumers a more active role in managing spending, instead of having the government decide.

So let’s cap them because they don’t roll over? What if someone needs them for a child with special needs, and they have $5,000 in yearly expenses. I guess screw you, you greedy parent. If Reid was so worried about wasteful spending because it doesn’t roll over, they are the ones who set that rule. Change the rule so they can roll over.

The Reid bill also assaults health savings accounts, or HSAs, which allow individuals to accumulate tax-free funds for future medical expenses when coupled with low-premium, high-deductible insurance. The Reid bill changes tax provisions to make HSAs less attractive, but the real threat comes via increased regulation.

These insurance products will likely be barred from the insurance “exchanges” that will demolish and supplant today’s individual market. Employers will also find them more difficult if not illegal to offer once the government has new powers to “define the essential health benefits” that all plans must eventually offer. Plans that focus mainly on catastrophic health expenses, instead of routine procedures, aren’t generous enough for Democrats.

HSAs work best because they  focus on catastrophic health expenses, instead of routine procedures. That is what will help drive costs down. They operate the way insurance is supposed to operate.

Liberals claim people who choose these options aren’t helping as much to finance a common pool and may encourage adverse selection if too many young or healthy people opt out. While all insurance involves some degree of risk-sharing, Democrats want to impose true social insurance a la Europe by obliterating the flexibility of insurers to design products that are tailored to suit different individual needs.

So as we now see, this isn’t about fixing health costs at all. It’s about creating a common pool. People’s freedom shouldn’t get in the way of creating a “common pool”. You shouldn’t have a right to decide what is best for you and your family. Government should decide. “Oh, come on ProudProf! This is just another example of the rich trying not to give their fair share.”

In fact, about 40% of tax filers with HSAs earn under $60,000, according to the IRS. The Employee Benefit Research Institute reports that 4% of adults with private insurance have an HSA this year—up from 1% in 2006—and about 9% are enrolled in some form of consumer-directed health plan. It also found that beneficiaries are evenly split between those with health problems and those without.

So 40% earn less than $60k, and HSAs allow the middle class to stretch their money further. They aren’t rich, and cannot afford an expensive health insurance plan to cover some other person’s daily doctor visit. As usual, the middle class is going to be the group who takes the hit, and what will the end result be? The result will be the exact thing Democrats claim to abhor, the spread between the haves and have nots.

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, whose members dominate the HSA market, says that enrollees are more likely than those with traditional insurance to be better consumers. They’re more likely to track expenses (63% to 43%), save for the future (47% to 18%), and search for information on physician quality (20% to 14%). They’re also more likely to participate and see results from wellness programs like weight loss, fitness and smoking cessation. This makes intuitive sense: They’ve got skin directly in the game.

David Goldhill, a media executive, recently wrote in the Atlantic Monthly that if a 22-year-old starts at his company today earning $30,000 and health costs grow at 3%, by the time he retires he’ll have paid out $1.77 million in premiums, lower wages, out-of-pocket costs and both sides of the Medicare payroll tax.

via Harry Reid’s Health-Care Bill Attacks HSAs – WSJ.com.

As with all government, the plan does nothing but destroy wealth and create waste. Young people will spend more on health insurance than they will ever use. Sounds like social security, which no young person believes they will even get.

The Wall Street Journal has a great article about a surgeon from India who is revolutionizing heart surgery through specialization and volume.

BANGALORE — Hair tucked into a surgical cap, eyes hidden behind thick-framed magnifying glasses, Devi Shetty leans over the sawed open chest of an 11-year-old boy, using bright blue thread to sew an artificial aorta onto his stopped heart.

As Dr. Shetty pulls the thread tight with scissors, an assistant reads aloud a proposed agreement for him to build a new hospital in the Cayman Islands that would primarily serve Americans in search of lower-cost medical care. The agreement is inked a few days later, pending approval of the Cayman parliament.

Dr. Shetty, who entered the limelight in the early 1990s as Mother Teresa’s cardiac surgeon, offers cutting-edge medical care in India at a fraction of what it costs elsewhere in the world. His flagship heart hospital charges $2,000, on average, for open-heart surgery, compared with hospitals in the U.S. that are paid between $20,000 and $100,000, depending on the complexity of the surgery.

Then there are the Cayman Islands, where he plans to build and run a 2,000-bed general hospital an hour’s plane ride from Miami. Procedures, both elective and necessary, will be priced at least 50% lower than what they cost in the U.S., says Dr. Shetty, who hopes to draw Americans who are uninsured or need surgery their plans don’t cover.

via The Henry Ford of Heart Surgery – WSJ.com.

What our politicians hate and don’t understand is you cannot control the free market and you can only harm yourself by attempting to do so. As you can see, Dr. Shetty will be opening a hospital in the Cayman Islands hoping to capture some of the US market. While our government continues to drive up our health care costs, foreign doctors see a profit opportunity. I’m guessing you will see a huge trend in this direction. If he can do surgery for a few thousand dollars, you will see people flocking. People spend more on insurance in a few months than it would cost for heart surgery at this hospital. Expand this model to other forms of medical care, and you will see global health care eat away at the US market.

The free market will create more an more services to help Americans get to these places. You will see medical transport services helping Americans to get to these places. You could see American doctors leaving to work in these places. How about American doctors being able to work from the US via some video stream? They’d be able to work outside the US restrictions from his US location. Thanks to our politicians,  you will see the economic power of the US moving away from the US. Say goodbye to our long term dominance.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning, Republican reps Jeb Hensarling and Pau Ryan layout why economic expectations are so low.

Why all the pessimism? The source appears to be a growing fear that the federal government is retreating from the free-market economic principles of the last half-century, and in particular the strong growth policies that began under Ronald Reagan. A review of the economic policies instituted by President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress lends credibility to this concern.

Exhibit A is the economic stimulus package signed into law by President Barack Obama in February. Even among previous stimulus efforts, the 2009 stimulus stands out for its ineffective targeting and sheer size. With interest, it is $1.1 trillion, double the size of Roosevelt’s New Deal spending as a percentage of GDP.

Exhibit B is tax policy going forward. It is a near certainty that Democratic-controlled Congress will allow most of the tax cuts of 2001-2003 to expire on Dec. 31, 2010.

Exhibit C is the administration’s intervention in the GM and Chrysler reorganizations. Upsetting decades of accepted bankruptcy law, the administration leveraged TARP funds to place unsecured and lower priority creditors like the United Auto Workers union in front of secured and higher priority creditors.

Health care, the administration’s signature issue, is Exhibit D. Disregarding its impact on quality and access, its plan will surely cost well over $1 trillion over the next decade. The House-passed version includes an 8% “pay or play” payroll tax and a half-trillion dollar surtax on incomes over $500,000, much of which will strike small business. Both taxes will tend to depress investment and the creation of new jobs.

If one substitutes the Blue Chip Economic Forecast’s interest-rate forecast for that of the administration, deficits will increase by an additional $1.2 trillion over the administration’s projected deficits. If the next decade’s interest rates climb to match those of the 1980s, then the deficit would increase another $5.3 trillion. If higher interest rates then slow economic growth, the impact on the deficit would be much worse.

via Jeb Hensarling and Paul Ryan: Why No One Expects a Strong Recovery – WSJ.com.

While I agree with all these, I think the reps believes that government is the solution, and the problem is their solution is not being implemented. This is what happens when you believe the government is the solution to our problems. Whoever lies the best and gets control of the government sets the policies. I’d love to see these guys calling for the government to quit tinkering with the economy.

The free market works, and will handle slow downs much better than politics. This recession would have hit us fast and moved on already without the tinkering. Can you imagine a doctor giving you a shot and saying I don’t want to inflict the pain, so let me put the needle in slowly? When you get a shot, you want it fast and quick. You know it’s going to hurt. Just get it over with. The economy is the same way. If we are going to go through some economic pain, take the brunt of it and get it over with. Instead we have these idiots trying to avoid any pain, and all they do is prolong it. The Fed caused the damn pain, and then says their role is minimize the pain and prevent it going forward. Really? Good job jackasses. Maybe we should try to control the weather so we don’t have any natural disasters.

If you want expectations to pick up, go back to the constitution. Quit tinkering. Tinkering only causes people to speculate on what the tinkering will be, and because our current tinkerers are bigger socialists than the previous tinkerers, they don’t feel good about the tinkering. Remove the tinkering ,and you remove the speculation and the negative expectations.

You can pretty much say goodbye to the days of ever increasing advances with the internet. Everyday there are more and more articles about government involvement. Eventually the debate will switch from should they be involved, to which policy is best. Once that happens, you are back to the “head or gut” question.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission began to lay the groundwork for a bigger federal role in the broadband business Wednesday, outlining the hurdles the U.S. needs to overcome to improve the availability of high-speed Internet access.

The FCC identified a number of issues the government should address, including the high cost of laying new broadband lines in rural areas, a lack of airwaves for wireless Web access and ill-informed consumers.

“This focus on broadband is a reflection of a recognition that the U.S. is lagging behind,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Wednesday at the agency’s monthly meeting.

The FCC is drafting a National Broadband Plan, which will lay out ways the government can improve broadband service in the U.S. The plan is scheduled to come out in February, and it’s uncertain how many of its suggestions will ultimately be adopted. Already, some big cable and telecommunications companies are concerned the agency wants to impose rules that could undermine their business strategies and profitability.

via Bigger U.S. Role in Broadband Is Likely – WSJ.com.

Why is this such a big damn issue? No one in the public is demanding it. The government is going to tell us why we are lacking broadband?

Notice one issue they claim is the cost of laying new line in rural areas. So the rest of us who live in more populated areas have to pay for someone’s internet who decides to live out in the boonies. That’s just great. More of the majority paying for the minority. Besides, satellite already delivers this, but this is the problem when the government looks at a “problem”. It’s not that they don’t have the ability to get internet, it’s that they don’t have it by means of cables under the ground. You always get a misidentification of the problem (in this case there is no problem) when you have central planning. Satellite used to be fast only on download, and it was still dialup for the upload. Now you have it fast in both directions. This is what is called innovation. But you can’t have that. We all need it by wire.

Next is the lack of airwares for wireless. In this case, just as all cases where the government controls something, you have scarcity created by the government. If the airwaves were owned or handled by the private sector, they would be used for their best use. If people were demanding more airwaves for wireless, then it would happen. Instead politics is entering into it (PBS is not happy about it).

Next, the government falls back to it’s default position. The people are just too stupid to know what’s good for them. The people are too dumb to realize they don’t need 100mbs broadband to every house like Japan has. Who cares if Japan has 100mbs to every house. Are they better off than us overall because of it? Are we harmed by only having 20mbs, when we decide that is all we need at the cost that it’s delivered at? My 93 year old grandma shouldn’t have her phone bill raised when she doesn’t even know what the internet is.

We are told we are lagging behind. This is just like the “keep up with the Jones” mentality of the consumer. It’s not that we truly need 100mbs broad band. It’s that someone else has it. It’s not fair. Didn’t we learn our lesson over the past decade with this mentality? Again, I say, why do we think things are so different at a governmental level than they are on a personal level. If keeping up with the Jones is bad personally, it is bad governmentally.

The government is creating an illusion of lack of supply. If there was more demand and not enough supply, prices of broadband would be increasing. As we all know, broadband is constantly decreasing in prices. Thanks to the free market and technological innovation, supply is increasing faster than demand. When that happens, prices go down, as they have. So, why are we even looking at this? We’ve already established we have more supply than demand. Who is benefiting from this? Could it be some of the big businesses that bought and paid for your politicians? Could it be Big Brother? It sure in the hell isn’t you. You aren’t even demanding it.

This morning on Morning Joe, they had on NBC’s medical expert to discuss the government’s medical panel’s recommendation that women should wait till they’re 50 for mammograms, and then only get them every two years.

So the death panels are not real? This is your death panel. If government controls health care, either this task force or some other central planning board will decide these type of issues based on cost. No panel can be independent when it is funded by the government. Also, their answer has to have a question. What was the question? Who posed the questions, and why? If I tell my wife, we need to cut our coffee budget by $50 a month, she is going to look and say, “well we really don’t need to have a cup of coffee after lunch, so I’d say we only have coffee in the morning going forward. That should reduce our cost.” This is similar to how this is being decided. We only have so much money for health care (thanks to the government), so do we really need to start mammograms at 40? Is the extra cost worth the saved lives? Under government controlled health care, the value of your life will be determined by these boards, or as Sarah Palin correctly called them, death panels.

I love how this lady starts putting down the Susan G. Komen charity.  Apparently, she doesn’t know what freedom is all about. No one is forcing people to donate time and money to this charity. People who have been touched by breast cancer donate to fight breast cancer. This is what real compassion is all about. Of course, that is great until it interferes with government policy. Now, she decides to turn it into greed.

Next, she says, (paraphrasing) “This is rationing. We ration food, sleep, etc.” Yes that is true, but we ration it based on our own personal choices and needs. The government does not force rationing. We decide what foods we want based on the money we have and the need we want to fulfill. This is how the free market works, and why you don’t need a government agency telling you how often you can eat meat (oh this did happen when the government controlled the economy during WWII). Only government creates unnecessary rationing.

When talking about rationing, she says, “Let’s take money to invest in ‘new treatment tools’” OK, this is silly. Treatment only matters if you are identified first, so they don’t do you any good if you aren’t getting tested. Also, who is the government to decide where money should be invested. If there is demand for mammograms by women, then it should be up to the woman and the doctor where that money should be invested. Are we to believe that companies aren’t investing in new technologies when there are so many people touched by breast cancer and so much money flooding into fighting breast cancer? If there is a need, the market will meet it.

But to her, this is “smart health care rationing”. I’m sure the Soviets and the Chinese thought they were doing smart rationing as well when tens of millions died of starvation. The problem is you can’t have a person or group of people who aren’t party to the transaction being the decider of rationing. Rationing is done by consumers and suppliers based on needs and pricing.

You have to love how compassionate she is about it though. It only saves 1 out of 2000 she says.  I guess one person doesn’t count. Joe has a great point. If that’s your relative, you don’t care if it’s only one out of two million. Also, this is voluntary. If it saves only one in 500,000, who cares as long as people want to get mammograms and doctors are willing to provide the service. Oh wait, that’s right. It is against the public good once government takes over health care. Also, what they are saying is confusing. It isn’t one life is saved out of 2000. It is one person is identified out of 2000 to have cancer. That does not sound too bad to me. Hopefully, it will eventually be only one out of 10,000. This has to be one of the most stupid reasons for not having mammograms. “Not enough people have cancer, so we shouldn’t check.” The government doesn’t mind when the poor spends hundreds of dollars per month on the lottery when their chances are one in millions. Oh, but that benefits the government . Never mind.

Then she talks about we don’t scan for these other things till 50 like colon and prostate cancer. So what. Could that be because those don’t normally occur till 50, and because maybe men just aren’t as prudent about things like that?

Next she delves off into the sex and the breast. I have no clue what that has to do with whether it’s worth having mammograms that catch cancer early, so I’ll just skip past it before I start blushing.

As with all media, there is no question as to whether the government should even have a role or say in this. Joe Scarborough says “We’ve been able to afford these fiscally(that means government money) in the past, and we just can’t anymore.” I’m sure glad he’s a Republican. He doesn’t even understand the market and that government is creating this shortage. Nor does he realize this is a free society, and the government should have nothing to do with these decisions.

As with all consumer purchases, this is not the place for the government to be involved. It should be up to a woman and her doctor. If a woman wants to get mammograms at 40 and every year, that should be her perogative. This is what I’ve been saying in all my post. If you ask the government to give you something, you give up your liberty. Ask them to pay for your health care, and you give up your right to have  your mammogram.

So, I wonder what’s next?

Well, the scam is up, and the Democrats know it. TARP and stimulus have had no effect on creating jobs. So if government didn’t work the first time, I guess they just didn’t do enough.

The House of Representatives is pushing a bill aimed at boosting employment, a potentially risky move that underscores Democrats’ fears about the economy and jobs — including their own as they head into an election year.

Elements of such a bill could run the gamut from infrastructure spending to small-business lending to extra aid for states and the unemployed, lawmakers said. Democratic leaders haven’t determined any specifics — including the politically dicey question of how to pay for it.

The beauty of the free market is you don’t have to pay for it. Get the government the hell out of the economy, and jobs will be created. Oh, and we won’ t have to pay for it. This one line underscores the idiocy of the government. Infrastructure spending is not going to create long term jobs. It also does nothing but reduce wealth, just as all central planning of the economy does. Ask Russia. Lending to small business isn’t going to create jobs either. If the economy is a disaster thanks to government, why would small businesses borrow money. Who are they producing for? Of course the government’s solution to this disasterous credit bubble is to offer more credit. Lastly, what the hell is extra aid to states going to do for jobs. There was extra aid to states with the last stimulus bill. It did absolutely nothing. It’s just moving money from the Federal government to the state government, both of which are out of control.

Among ideas floated Tuesday by Democratic leaders were using bailout money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program and a tax on Wall Street firms’ financial transactions, such as derivatives trades.

“Hey, trust me.” says the government. We only lied to you about needing the $750 billion by the weekend to bailout Wall Street. Low and behold we have tons of the money still sitting around waiting for us to play God with.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who runs the House Democrats’ campaign effort, said lawmakers were aiming for a six-year infrastructure bill that also could include energy-related investment.

Energy related investment? You mean a GE payoff? Energy companies will invest themselves if it makes economic sense. If it doesn’t make economic sense, and the government decides to do it, that means we’ve basically had our standard of living reduced. If solar power, for example, doesn’t produce a good ROI, it doesn’t matter who is paying for it. No matter what it’s not a good ROI and in this case, the tax payer is funding this bad investment.

Mr. Van Hollen, a member of the Ways and Means Committee, said lawmakers also might consider a payroll-tax holiday — a short-term break on Social Security and Medicare taxes to boost private-sector hiring. He said that might be an alternative to an employer tax credit for new hires, an idea that critics say is fraught with enforcement problems.

Hahaha. So the solution to creating jobs is a payroll-tax holiday? Social security and medicare are both bankrupt, but taking money from them is a good idea. If it’s such a good idea, and this is what is hampering the job market, let’s ditch it for good. This is just stupid. While I would love to see these taxes go, a temporary holiday isn’t going to trick an intelligent business person into hiring. If that reduction in cost is temporary, so is the position.

The White House didn’t comment on the developments. President Barack Obama announced a jobs summit for early December and the administration is likely to weigh in with its own recommendations.

Please President Obama. Give us your wise recommendations. They have benefited us so much so far.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) said he hoped to bring the bill to the House floor by mid-December, giving rank-and-file lawmakers a chance to vote just before the start of the 2010 election season, when control of Congress will be up for grabs.

“Clearly, 10.2% unemployment is unacceptable and is causing great pain to literally millions of people around the country,” Mr. Hoyer said.

This is so important that we need to wait till the political season begins, so politicians can take complete advantage of the politics of it.

House lawmakers hope the Senate also will act before the end of the year. Senate leaders said late Tuesday, they planned to tackle the issue only after completing the health-care overhaul. Sparring over the jobs legislation could last for many weeks beyond that.

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka put pressure on Congress to act Tuesday when he rolled out a proposal putting heavy emphasis on government spending on infrastructure, including schools, as well as a new round of aid to states and local governments to forestall layoffs.

Let’s have a guy who never started a business and only loots business owners tell us how to create jobs. The only form of job creation the AFL-CIO knows is pummeling private businesses into the ground until they aren’t competitive, and then costing many jobs.

Rep. John Larson (D., Conn.), the House Democratic caucus chairman, said he believed House Democrats would have to offset the bill’s cost, at least in part, to answer concerns about the soaring federal budget deficit. The government is expected to run a $1.4 trillion deficit in fiscal 2010, which began on Oct. 1. Democrats are likely to delay the effective date of new taxes until the recession is over.

Another possible revenue source is taxes on Internet gaming.

Mr. Larson, who as the House Democratic caucus chairman pays close attention to rank-and-file members’ attitudes, said there was growing momentum for a tax on some Wall Street trading.

There you go. Tax Wall Street trading. That should boost the economy. Let’s tax capital that is used to fund business expansion and creation.

Leading Democrats in both chambers, including Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, have expressed reservations about a tax on financial transactions, out of concern it could drive trading offshore.

Wow, I actually can’t believe Barney Frank said this. So, he understands that this could drive trading offshore, and thus cost the government capital gains taxes, but for some reason he doesn’t see how massive business taxes and regulation drive businesses offshore.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) said he would support legislation that would further extend the jobless benefits program and boost infrastructure spending, including roads and bridges. The senator said such spending would not only create jobs but boost the efficiency of the U.S. economy. “We need to do much more, ” he said.

Hahaha, the government is going to boost the efficiency of the economy. Did I read that correctly? Also, extending jobless benefits even more. Now there is motivation to get off you butt and start working.

Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R., Va.), said any bill that added to the deficit wouldn’t work. “They tried that approach once and failed,” Mr. Dayspring said.

Among the ideas for unused TARP funds are direct lending to small businesses, and funding of an infrastructure bank that would provide seed money for projects.

via House Leaders Push for Jobs Bill – WSJ.com.

I guess ultimately we get what we deserve. We elect these moronic bums to represent us, so we have no one to blame but ourselves. Who cares if their ideas don’t make sense. Who cares if your family is struggling financially, you wouldn’t believe spending more and borrowing more is the fix. This is the government. It’s different.