I'm sure you've heard this is just a recycling of everything that Obama has proposed for years: Glenn Beck's crew did a great mock game show on the radio and TV where they played sections of speeches from the first stimulus speech in 2009, and from last week. Then they challenged folks to guess which year it was from. It was virtually impossible. Word for word in places. With that, lets' get started:
- Let's start off with a fun one: do you know how it gets paid for? Remember the "Super Congress" thing passed during the Debt Ceiling Debate? The one that has to find $1.5 trillion in savings in a few weeks? From Page 155 - the last page of the bill: "(a) INCREASED TARGET FOR JOINT SELECT COMMITTEE.— Section 401(b)(2) of the Budget Control Act of 2011 is amended by striking “$1,500,000,000,000” and inserting “$1,950,000,000,000”. So the whole thing is paid for by telling the Super Congress - you fools figure out how to pay for it!
- More Obama boilerplate: page 150, "SUBTITLE C – CLOSE LOOPHOLE FOR CORPORATE JET DEPRECIATION" "SEC. 421. GENERAL AVIATION AIRCRAFT TREATED AS 7-YEAR PROPERTY." Let's close that corporate jet depreciation loophole that we created when we got elected. That ought to put the folks who work on those jets out of work! Think of all the airport jobs; the mechanics, clerks, assemblers... think of all the workers we can ruin with this one!
- Let's raise income taxes on the millionaires and billionaires. Where million and billion are defined to mean $250,000 or less. (page 135)
- "the taxpayer’s adjusted gross income is above—
(A) $250,000 in the case of a joint return within the meaning of section 6013,
(B) $225,000 in the case of a head of household return,
(C) $125,000 in the case of a married filing separately return. or
(D) $200,000 in all other cases; ..." - There's lots more tax increases in there, too. Remove deductions for oil well drilling operations that turn up dry holes (Sec 431, p.151). This will wipe out the small producers but have no effect on the big companies. Repeal tax deductions for "Tertiary injectancts" (I think this is to discourage "fracking"). There's just a wholesale removal of tax credits, deductions and depreciations for oil companies, pages 151-153
- Are you a big fan of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two Government Sponsored Entities who did the most to crash the economy? Take heart! This bill creates the American Infrastructure Financing Authority (section 245, page 40) which will do the same wonders for Infrastructure financing that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did for housing! But don't worry, the executives will be appointed by the President. What could possibly go wrong?
- Worried about not enough Wireless Internet for First Responders? The National Wireless Initiative, (section 271, page 62) creates a redundant organization to the FCC ("the Public Safety Broadband Corporation established in section 284") to manage the spectrum vacated by the UHF TV broadcasters when TV went digital. This is often called "white space" and is in the range of 758 MHz (MegaHertz) to 763 MHz and from 788 MHz to 793 MHz. Section 281, p. 75 reallocates this spectrum to first responder use. They'll have broad powers, too. They can auction spectrum, kick existing users out of spectrum they legally use, pay them by taking money from the auctions - it'll be wonderful!
- Remember that whole Lightsquared/GPS thing? It was predicated on Lightsquared being able to use satellite spectrum for their terrestrial broadband plans. Well section 274, page 69, creates "REQUIREMENTS WHEN REPURPOSING CERTAIN MOBILE SATELLITE SERVICES SPECTRUM FOR TERRESTRIAL BROADBAND USE." which will "SPECTRUM.—... the Assistant Secretary shall identify and make available for immediate reallocation, at a minimum, 15 megahertz of contiguous spectrum at frequencies located between 1675 megahertz and 1710 megahertz, inclusive, minus the geographic exclusion zones, or any amendment thereof...." That ought to put some of those allegations of corruption to bed.
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