Re-Re-rebates Anyone?

January 17, 2008: following the evening ‘news’

A few minutes ago I sat and watched a discussion about possible actions the federal government might take to address the worsening economic situation in the country. The context is, of course, the 24% decline in new home construction over the same period last year, the paltry creation of ‘new jobs’ over the past few months, the essential collapse of new home sales, the steadily increasing cost of absolutely everything from gasoline to lettuce, and today’s drop of over 300 points in the stock market, a drop which brings the total plunge over the last couple of weeks to more than a thousand points.

The discussion I watched was staged on The Evening News with Jim Lehrer on PBS. Besides the facilitator/commentator, whose name I don’t recall, there was the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, a Democrat from South Carolina, and the Minority Chairman or whatever they call him, a Republican from Minnesota. Added to the backdrop of the context above were comments made to Congress today by Fed Chairman Bernanke. The performance by these two congressmen was absolutely stunning, mind-numbing and, if the situation weren’t so serious, hilarious; for a while I thought I was watching an American version of a Monty Python sketch. The odor of dripping, unctuous seriousness with which they took themselves almost reached through the glass of the TV screen. Fortunately it didn’t, so the air in my kitchen was spared the stench of putrefaction.What they said was so unintelligible, unintelligent, and incoherent it could have been a script from one of the late lamented Professor Irwin Corey’s stand-up routines.

What is truly scary is that these are the Congressional ‘folks’ who are going to try and ‘fix’ things. I don’t think they have any real ideas what is actually broken, how it is broken, or why. They were offering up the notion that a ‘temporary tax rebate’ for ‘middle class’ tax payers, an amount that they suggested would total a whopping $800/per taxpayer would ‘stimulate’ the economy back into health, particularly if it was coupled with a very large and more permanent tax cut or rebate for businesses, which would encourage them to buy more equipment, etc. Guess who's going to come out ahead in the back-room bargaining?

After the two 'lawmakers' nattered on about this for at least 15 minutes, I came away feeling as though someone had just drilled a hole in my head and drained out my brains. Where have these A-holes been for the last six years? What planet have they suddenly beamed down from? DO they seriously think that $800 in tax rebates is going to do anything significant for the average American? It might pay a back heating bill or two, or put gas in the car for a couple of months but around here that amount of money wouldn’t even pay for the cost of a monthly health premium. I guess they haven’t noticed that the entire system, as John Edwards has pointed out, is ‘rigged’. Without major corrections to the system itself, things will continue to erode, not just gradually, and not gently. Too bad we’re all probably going to sit by passively and watch all of it happen. But then what else can we do? Press our 'elected representatives' for reform? The analogy that Al Gore used about frogs in water applies just as well to us in the soup of our economy as it does to global warming.

But of course our ‘elected representatives’ are in a very different position; these Congrecats are sitting there with free health care for themselves and their family, a rather generous retirement plan, which for those who serve for more than 20 years is equal to 80% of their highest salary. And in case you were wondering, the salary for a congressman or a senator these days is $169,300. They also get personnel and staff allowances, expense allowances, travel benefits and free mailing privileges. Meanwhile, the average household income in the US as of 2006, was estimated to be less than $48,300. I know it is hard to take that number seriously, at least for this particular part of the country. But even if it's well up into the $60K or $70K figure around here, it’s still quite a gap. And BTW, do you know many folks who get a free ride on health care?

To add some additional context: I recall reading somewhere that the average cost per family of the ‘war’ in Iraq is actually going to end up close to $30,000. The war itself will cost well over 1 TRILLION dollars. Let me write that out: $1,000,000,000,000. That’s a thousand billion. We’re currently shelling out $200 million per day to prop up these folks. Some other facts: Not only have we expended more than 250,000 bullets for every individual insurgent killed (according to a recent NY Times article), so far US war expenditures are equal to nearly $3800 per Iraqi. By the way more than 3800 US troops have been killed. Interesting symmetry huh? Sort of puts that proposed $800 tax rebate into perspective doesn’t it?