Liberty Maven

The evidence is hard to ignore. The stimulus bill that Barack Obama is pushing today is nothing more than the Progressive’s version of the Patriot Act. Ron Paul should peel away the stimulus stamped outer shell to reveal the massive growth of government in the meat of the bill.

There’s even a nod to universal health care in it:

Nurses Recovery funding: $600 million A key component of attaining universal health care reform will be ensuring the supply of primary health care providers – family medicine, internal medicine, pediatricians, dentists, and nurses.

As Mike Miller’s extensive list (posted here this morning) shows, there is little immediate stimulus found in this wrongly-titled bill.

In fact, even the Congressional Budget Office put out a study of the bill showing that most of the provisions won’t even take effect for years.

From an extensive analysis from The Motley Fool:

The CBO said that provisions to increase energy efficiency and renewable energy use would ultimately be spent within seven years.  It also estimated that would take five years to spend 85% of the money dedicated to highway and other infrastructure projects.  Keep in mind that this is the government’s own estimate as to how quickly the plan will be implemented, which is likely very overoptimistic.

The CBO report even specifically states that “congressional authorizations for sharp increases in spending have typically been followed by a noticeable lag in actual spending.”  No Ship Sherlock.  The government is a large, inefficient beast.  This plan isn’t going to be nearly as stimulative for the economy as many would like us to believe.

So all of this evidence left me thinking: why? Why is Obama pushing so hard for this right now? Well, it’s pretty obvious isn’t it? Obama’s approval ratings are now at their highest they will ever be. It is his golden opportunity to push through a massive far reaching leftist/progressive agenda rolled up in stimulus wrapping paper, much like it was a golden opportunity for the Bush administration following 9-11 to push the Patriot Act into law.

Let us recall that Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel is on record as saying, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

Well, it looks like the Obama administration is capitalizing on our economic crisis by dressing up a gargantuan leftist spending agenda in economic stimulus clothes. ‘O’ is turning into ”W’ already.

Hopefully this effort is not lost on Ron Paul and other free marketeers in Congress. I will wait to see the floor speeches denouncing this bill. I hope to hear someone call this bill for what it is: Obama’s version of the Patriot Act.