Thoughts on HR1

I just checked out the text of HR1, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. I didn’t get very far. Do you know why? It’s a whopping 242 pages long. Certainly, there have been longer bills than this over the years, but that doesn’t make it any better. I am only certain of two representatives who actually would have read all 242 pages of this bill before voting on it. One is a Republican, one is a Democrat. One voted for it, and one voted against it. What did the other 533 representatives vote on? They voted on what they thought the bill said, rather than what it actually says.

Too many times in the past, we have heard regret from our elected congressmen for voting for or against legislation (usually for), and then only realizing the true effects of it afterwards, when if they had read the bills they were voting on beforehand, they wouldn’t have voted the way they did to begin with.

This is why I am a supporter of the Read the Bills Act, which will require a reading of all bills brought before congress before a quorum of each house, a 7 day waiting period to allow the public time to read the bills themselves and contact their representatives and senators regarding their thoughts, wishes, concerns, among other things.

So what kind of fun things are in HR1?

• $2 billion to restart work on a zero-emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it was deemed inefficient. I’m sure someone was thinking, “but it’s green! Green is cool!” Expect a bailout of that pwer plant in the future when it can’t turn a profit.
• $246 million tax break for movie producers to buy film. Because those starving Hollywood producers need all the tax breaks they can get, and the MPAA is going to pull this country out of a recession.
• $448 million to construct the Department of Homeland Security headquarters. Because more bureaucracy == more wasteful spending.
• $248 million for furniture at aforementioned headquarters. I’m sorry, what? Ah, that’s right, the government buys the most expensive furniture they can find. I must have forgotten.
• $75 million for smoking cessation, which I have yet to find as one of Congress’ responsibilities in the Constitution.
• $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction. Dolls, you’re the ones who eliminated taxes on tribal alcohol, and after all you’ve done for to them, what did you expect?
• $850 million for Amtrak, because letting the free market do it’s thing to allow unprofitable companies to die and make room for profitable startups would just be criminal, now wouldn’t it?

This “stimulus package” will throw the nation further into debt, and nothing more. Expect a slight, short term bump in the markets on the news of it’s passing, but that’s about it.

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