Claire took a lot of heat on this site over her remarks about holding Bush and Cheney “accountable”. Her attitude about spending taxpayer money sensibly is less likely to raise your ire. She responded to a question about her no vote on cap and trade legislation by explaining that in the form it was offered, we were committing ourselves to fifty trillion dollars in pre-spent money–unnecessarily.
She seriously did say fifty trillion. She’s holding out for a better bill.
Similarly, Claire is cautious about the stimulus:
“Let me talk about the stimulus real quickly. I … I …. I hope I can vote for it. And the reason I say that is I’m nervous. I’m very nervous. I’m very, very nervous. You take the idea that we’re going to spend 500 billion to 700 billion dollars in America and you hand it over to the appropriators. There is a real fear I have that there will be people who will substitute projects in this bill that are not good stimulaters in terms of the economy. This bill is not about solving the problems in America. That’s not what it’s for. It’s not to solve the health care problem. It’s not to help solve the education problem. It’s not there to solve any social problem we have in this country. It is there to create jobs. And if we do not have the discipline to make sure that every dime we spend in the stimulus package is in fact going to create jobs, then we’re going to be throwing away some of your money. And we can’t afford to be throwing away any of your money right now. (…) There’s a lot of ways to create jobs–shovel ready projects, infrastructure–is one way. There are other ways we can create jobs, but that’s the test: that we can create jobs and that we can realistically create them–this is the sticker–within ninety days. So this is not for a long term stimulus; this is for a short term stimulus.”
I want hundreds of billions of dollars spent on creating jobs. I want it spent quickly. But Claire is right. We spent money bailing out banks that are now refusing to lend money to deserving companies. That bill should have been better crafted, and I appreciate Claire’s caution about what gets into the stimulus package.
Or close to it. There was a recent NGO that said cutting greenhouse gases by 50% by the year 2040 would cost $43 trillion globally. Why does McCaskill think it will cost the US even more?
And again, jobs for what? Are we going to spend billions to create jobs for people to dig holes in the ground and fill them back up? Or are we going to spend money on creating a real infrastructure for future development? I mean, jeez, fixing health care will stimulate more jobs because employers and employees alike will be freer to invest their money and time on other things than managing health care costs. And investments in clean energy will similarly pay huge dividends, some of which will be actual jobs right here in this country.
I hope McCaskill is just being watchful against boondoggles. What I fear is she’s becoming a budget hawk when we need an FDR to cut the strings loose.
on December 15th: