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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (5678)	3/5/2009 1:01:34 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 86356

However, I'm looking for facts Why they sudden change of heart? They've never mattered to you before... But here you go.. "We were told this was going to be a massive infrastructure spending program," says Veronique De Rugy, a senior research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center. She argues that the bill is overflowing not with needed infrastructure spending, but with hundreds of billions in pork. Now.. how much of this is actually being spent on Infrastructure? Where you might find the pork is in the so-called discretionary spending portion of the bill, which amount to $308 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Of that money, $48 billion goes to the Department of Transportation for various rail and road projects to repair and expand infrastructure. That leaves about $260 billion of discretionary spending that goes to various federal agencies, as well as to state and local governments. usnews.com And here's a breakdown from the CBO analysis: washingtonpost.com Pretty damn clear.. less than 5% of that bill is going to infrastructure projects. And even if we take out the 34% that is going to tax cuts, that still means that the $48 Billion out of $550 Billion only equates to LESS THAN 10% of the overall stimulus package. And $8 Billion of that is for Reid's Mag-Lev train from Disneyland to Las Vegas.. I also heard yesterday that the EPA's budget was upped by 92% and this latest omnibus spending bill gives them another 30% budget increase. We've never known the EPA to be in the interests of creating jobs (except for themselves). That stimulus package is full of special interest funding and entitlement increases. And as I've discussed at length, this alternative energy package is going to UNDERMINE this economy because it's not focused upon creating efficiencies and productivity increases. Hawk