At www.recovery.gov, the website set-up by Obama for outlining his “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”, a friendly bar graph is displayed, roughly breaking down where “your money” is going.
Note the bar “Tax Relief” listed as the number one expenditure.
Wow! That’s the biggest piece of the pie, you say! We all know from history that “tax cuts” are the best vehicle for recession busting.
Just under the graph is a link named “Learn more” (not shown). Oh goodie! More information as to where these “tax cuts” will be implemented. THIS is what we want!
Clicking that brings us to another graph, this time in pretty-colored bubble form, which shows the same information.
Note, however the ominous asterisk next to “Tax Relief”. It denotes some fine print at the bottom of the page with this information (Emphasis mine):
* Tax Relief – includes $15 B for Infrastructure and Science, $61 B for Protecting the Vulnerable, $25 B for Education and Training and $22 B for Energy, so total funds are $126 B for Infrastructure and Science, $142 B for Protecting the Vulnerable, $78 B for Education and Training, and $65 B for Energy.
The bulk of this “Tax Relief”, $123 billion, is geared toward the spending side of this bill, presumably in the form of tax credits. No where in this bill does it list anything labeled as “Tax Cuts”.
Transparency was supposed to be a hallmark of this administration, and specifically this bill (clicking on the “Read the bill” link doesn’t work). This “tax relief” is really just more spending under a different name.
Nice try, Obama.
Note: Link is now fixed.
