Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Mr. Transparency?


If you go to the Obama Internet site called recovery.gov, you would proudly see this graph showing the breakdown of the Stimulus Package. On top, you can clearly see that tax cuts make up the bulk of this $890 billion pig. But, this is truly being dishonest and hardly transparent. The $288 billion that is being shown as the top bar of this chart actually pales in comparison to $602 billion in spending that makes up the 7 bars under the category of tax relief. This is another example of the sleight of hand from the Obama Administration and not the truth. It is interesting that the Obama team has decided to breakdown the spending items and leave tax cuts alone. A more "truthful" bar chart would be:



It should be pointed out that many of the tax cuts that Obama is claiming under this plan can only be categorized as "maybe's" because they are highly dependent on the consumer running out and buying things like expensive electric cars in order to get that tax benefit. At a time when we are in a recession, buying big ticket items, like electric cars or solar powered systems, is probably more hopeful than likely.

If I hear, just one more time, that this is the most "transparent" government in the history of the United States, I'll throw up!

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