By Steven Deam, Sr. – CNC Industries, Inc. Fort Wayne, Indiana
August 7, 2010
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One year ago I place a banner in front of our company that expressed my frustration over the $787 billion dollar “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009”. It was my belief that the so-called “stimulus bill” would do very little to “stimulate” the economy. Why? Because I thought it was very much misdirected.
The stimulus bill was touted as being used for mostly “shovel ready projects”. Even on the surface of it that didn’t make much sense to me. Since we were in the grip of a very broad-based recession, which was impacting almost all professions, what was everyone supposed to do – become construction workers? What about all the people in a wide variety of other professions who found themselves unemployed? How was the much touted ARRA going to help them?
Now, a year later, we know the answer…. the Recovery Act was a big failure. Not only did it not bring unemployment down and stimulate the economy, the opposite has happened. Is the country any better off today than it was a year ago? I suppose a few segments of the population might say yes it is. But I venture to say that the vast majority of people believe we are much worse off, for a number of very important reasons. And what do we have to show for the hundreds of billions of dollars in TARP, ARRA, and all of the other spending? Nothing but an astronomical debt! And now, at the mid-term elections they expect us to re-elect them??
During a recent trip my wife and I saw at least a half dozen signs saying: “This project was paid for by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009”. I guess my wife and I think differently than our esteemed politicians do. Instead of making us feel good about all of the money that was spent, those signs were nothing more than a reminder to us of how wasteful our government is. Let’s at least hope that some privately owned sign shops have been stimulated by all of the signage business. I hear the signs were very expensive!
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