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More Stimulus? Obama Wants $478 Billion for Roads and Bridges

More Stimulus? Obama Wants $478 Billion for Roads and Bridges

Shovel ready?

Obama sure does like to spend money. Back in 2009, his Stimulus bill managed to use up almost a trillion dollars. The budget he’s going to release this time around will request just under half a trillion dollars for American roads and bridges.

Juliet Eilperin and Ed O’Keefe of the Washington Post:

Obama budget: Tax on overseas profits to pay for U.S. roads and bridges

President Obama’s budget request set for release Monday includes plans for a six-year, $478 billion public works program that would be paid for with a one-time 14 percent tax on overseas corporate profits.

Details of Obama’s budget plan released in recent days have been widely rejected by congressional Republicans. But finding a way to enact a new federal infrastructure spending plan has been an unattainable goal on Capitol Hill for several years. Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) hoped to pass a new highway bill shortly after the GOP took control of the House in 2011 but has struggled to build support among skeptical conservatives.

According to a document shared by administration officials on Sunday, Obama’s plan to rebuild the nation’s airports, bridges, highways and railroads would be paid for by imposing a 14 percent tax on up to $2 trillion in profits that companies have accumulated overseas over a number of years to avoid paying corporate income taxes. That’s far lower than the current top corporate tax rate of 35 percent. The one-time tax on the repatriation of foreign profits differs from other proposals to offer a “tax holiday” for companies that would pay a much lower tax rate voluntarily to help fund new road construction projects. Obama opposes such tax holidays.

One has to wonder if there are more “shovel ready” jobs available this time.

Spending is out of control, and as Carol E. Lee and Kristina Peterson of the Wall Street Journal have pointed out, Obama is exceeding spending caps:

Obama Budget Proposes 7% More in Spending Above Sequestration Caps

President Barack Obama will propose government spending that is 7%—or $74 billion—over caps he and congressional Republicans agreed to in a bipartisan deficit-reduction deal over three years ago, a White House official said Thursday.

Mr. Obama’s fiscal 2016 budget, due to be released Monday, will propose some $561 billion in defense spending and $530 billion in nondefense spending, the official said.

The amounts exceed the levels set under the 2011 budget law by $38 billion for defense and $37 billion for nondefense, the official said.

Mr. Obama is pointing to recent economic growth and national-security threats as justifications to exceed the caps, which he and congressional Republicans agreed to in the wake of a market-rattling fiscal fight over increasing the government’s borrowing limit.

In spite of all this, the administration is sending a misleading message that America’s financial situation is just great. See the tweet below, via Twitchy:

See? Everything is fine.

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Comments

Jobs for illegals. Contractors will get $5000. tax break for hiring illegals.

Holder sued one Texas company for NOT hiring illegals.

This administration is foreign anti-American unconstitutional leftist, screwball, insane leftist.

    jayjerome66 in reply to Uncle Samuel. | February 2, 2015 at 12:10 pm

    The Center for Immigration Studies has estimated that about one out of seven (or 15 percent) of workers employed in construction in the United States are illegal immigrants. That means six out of seven are legal citizens. Sounds like a good proportion of employed legal Americans to pay to fix up the roads and bridges.

    And with Republicans in charge of both houses, they can add stiff penalties to contractors who hire illegals (I recommend televised public whippings to CEOs who hire illegals), and then we’ll have better roads, and some entertaining TV to watch on the news.

      Not A Member of Any Organized Political in reply to jayjerome66. | February 2, 2015 at 1:05 pm

      Obama is the Ultimate Corporate Owned Establishment Man. (Hey, revel against the Establishment, Man!)

      I’ve had contractors tell me first hand that at times in certain areas, it is almost 100% illegals.

      So Obama is gonna up the PROFITS of his Corporate Cronies, soak the Middle Class with more Un-Employment, More Taxes, and play Kabuki Theatre about taxing anyone else – let alone his “in bed” friends at Google and Facebook.

legacyrepublican | February 2, 2015 at 9:05 am

How about lowering the corporate tax rate instead and getting that $2 trillion state side where it would be used to capitalize our economy with investment and thus raise the tax revenues coming in through a stronger economy that could pay for new bridges and roads without having to raise taxes?

Budget numbers always seem like monopoly money. We really ought to always be talking about them per-capita.

Example: President Obama, today, asked for a little over $1,500 per capita to spend on roads and bridges…

$478 billion is barely even a number to most people — $1,500 per person is real money.

JimMtnViewCaUSA | February 2, 2015 at 10:22 am

A bit from the Obama Admin history: what happened the first time they tried to go with Infrastructure spending to create jobs for burly men.
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/80557/

Eastwood Ravine | February 2, 2015 at 11:01 am

Another bail-out for labor, because that is who will get the contracts.

Barry is simply on a mad scramble to keep the narrative going. There will be no bill because those stinkburger Republicans hate workers.

Did you hear Barry’s apologia and appeal for Greece?

You cannot keep on squeezing countries that are in the midst of depression. At some point there has to be a growth strategy in order for them to pay off their debts to eliminate some of their deficits.
… but it’s very hard to initiate those changes if people’s standards of livings are dropping by 25%. Over time, eventually the political system, the society can’t sustain it.

What a whopper, eh? One minute, O wants spending. The next minute, he sounds like a Republican! He is so full of … himself.

Children often have imaginary friends, so does this President with his agendas. This President’s budgets and agendas, at least those that require congressional action, are pure child-like fantasies that we should not take seriously. What these proposals deserve is laughter. Having been repudiated by the American electorate at the last election, Obama is now a two year lame duck whose budget proposals will end up in the shredder. One prior Obama budget got zero votes in the Senate, not even Democrats voted for it. So why waste time taking his budget proposals seriously? Within foreign affairs and the domestic realm in which he can act by executive memo or order he’s still a force, outside it, a dreamer.

Common Core?

Response to the newly elected Siriza Party from German government official Hans-Peter Friedrich: “The Greeks have the right to vote for whom they want. We have the right to no longer finance Greek debt.”

Americans no longer want to finance Obama’s debt.

The only shovel ready job I can see is cleaning the shit out of the White House.

Spend, baby spend.
I guess being 18 TRILLION dollars in debt (that we now cannot even afford to service) is not enough? we have to bury ourselves FURTHER?

Somebody’s gotta take his phone and pen away.

    JimMtnViewCaUSA in reply to Twanger. | February 2, 2015 at 1:06 pm

    “Somebody’s gotta take his phone and pen away.”

    Plus the jets and helicopters!
    Maybe the golf clubs and Nicorette gum as well 🙂

If Tyrant Obama the Liar wants to spend $500 million on shovel ready jobs again then let him eliminate that in federal government waste first. The dept of ed doesn’t contribute anything of value. We can eliminate it and use 10% of the saving for his shovel ready jobs.