Pirate's Cove

Washington Times

Congressional leaders struck a deal last night on an economic-stimulus plan that will give rebate checks of $300 to $1,200 to U.S. households and give tax breaks to businesses, an aide close to the negotiations said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California reached the accord in a phone call with Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican. She dropped proposals to dole out more food stamps, unemployment benefits and home-heating subsidies in exchange for giving $300 rebate checks to most workers, even those too poor to pay income taxes.

“There will be no new spending except for the rebates,” said a Republican staffer familiar with the deal.

Mrs. Pelosi also abandoned the Democratic push for spending on infrastructure projects, including construction and repair of roads and bridges, which critics said would take months to start and even longer to affect the economy.

Hey, what happened to the “rebates” for those who do not pay taxes? You know they stimulate the local liquor and lottery ticket economies. Oh, don’t look at me that way. Someone had to say it, and you know you were thinking it, too.

Of course, it looks like the Senate Dems will gum up the works with their need to pretend they care about people

Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who is chairman of the Finance Committee, reiterated his interest in extending unemployment benefits at a hearing on Thursday morning, where he said his committee would mark up a fiscal stimulus bill next week.

“There are reports that a deal may be close on the House side,” Mr. Baucus said. “The Senate will want to speak, as well.”

Perhaps Baucus has missed how low the unemployment rate is.

And Paul Krugman let’s his Bush Derangement Syndrome shine

You can blame the Bush administration, whose hostility to helping those in need is now getting in the way of good economic policy. But I’m also disappointed with the Democratic leadership, for not standing up more forcefully.

Yes, because Democrats, like Nancy Pelosi, had nothing to do with it. Of course, Comrade Krugman has previously suggested, you guessed it! ramping up government spending. Cause that worked wonders in the old Soviet Union.

More at Memeorandum.

Quick update: AMERICAblog shows the true stripes of the hard left

According to AP, congressional leaders have reached a deal on those economic stimulus checks. And rather than being geared towards helping the economy, they’re apparently geared towards redistributing wealth (that would be our wealth) to the poor. What a surprise. Folks in the middle (i.e, those who are not rich or poor) are screwed by the Democrats (and Republicans) yet again. Let me give you the details that just leaked, and again this may not be the final deal, but it sure sounds like it: (snip)

The Republicans ONLY want to help the rich, and the Democrats ONLY want to help the poor. Screw everybody else. I am so sick of these people.

When push comes to shove, they show that their mantra is “what is government going to give ME!”

More: many lefties are not being kind to John Aravosis, the author of that post, nor are his commenter’s. A thought occurs: is he actually saying that folks above the $75K/$150K line are not the middle class, which means, conversely, and more importantly, that people who make less the that $75/$150 line are poor?

Friday update: commenter tas points out the Aravosis toasted his post. It no longer appears at the afformentioned link. Apparently, what John did was change the date to December 22, 2007, and sh*tcan the majority of comments. There had to be around 600 after the original post. Kudos to K-T at Feministe.