Stimulus Package

[CoeburnCane]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: sup-rbeast</div><div class="ubbcode-body">You guys are arguing this like you're talkin to Pacman about Manson and dinos...</div></div>

LMAO...good one... [img]/LDPforum/ubbthreads/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif[/img]

[shwalker32]

i agree if u did not pay income taxes or anything along those lines you should not be eligible for this refund!

[BlueWahooChambordDevil]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: shwalker32</div><div class="ubbcode-body">i agree if u did not pay income taxes or anything along those lines you should not be eligible for this refund! </div></div>
you wont be

[imported_elp6n]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: BlueWahooChambor</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: shwalker32</div><div class="ubbcode-body">i agree if u did not pay income taxes or anything along those lines you should not be eligible for this refund! </div></div>
you wont be</div></div>

Some will.
Those who earned over $3000 but did not pay income taxes will be eligible for a partial rebate - $300 rather than $600. Under Bush's original proposal they wouldn't have gotten any, and the rest would have gotten $800 rebates.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Under the agreement announced by the White House, Boehner and Pelosi, individual taxpayers would get up to $600 in rebates, working couples $1,200 and those with children an additional $300 per child. In a key concession to Democrats, 35 million families who make at least $3,000 but don't pay taxes would get $300 rebates</div></div>

[lpd_observer]

I have to completely disagree with how you address the national debt issue. It is very important that the government be responsible stewards of our tax dollars by not allowing their expenditures to outpace the revenues. We halt the growing national debt by balancing the budget. This year's deficit is at 260 billion dollars, and I do believe that 150 billion would make a difference in reducing that particular balance.

It has never made since to me to give a tax break unless you have a budget surplus with no real debt. Since we have both those things, it only makes since to me that we should use tax dollars to compensate our creditors. This would increase consumer confidence among both American citizens and foreign investors alike.

Your policy contains microeconomic policies which simply would not be practical in larger economies of scale. Instead of just handing money to potential consumers, lets fix our institutions from the ground up. If people are confident in American insitutions (the stock market, lending industry, Banking system, Governmental spending), then we wont really need to worry about longterm spending slowdowns and extended recession cycles.

9 trillion dollars will not get paid off overnight, but the journey of 1 thousand miles starts with one step. Simply put, we need to start hacking away at this thing at some point. This "eat, drink, and be merry" attitude needs to end at some point, because tomorrow probably will come and we wont be fiscally prepared to deal with it.

"About a quarter of all subprime mortgages are in default, resulting in billions of dollars in losses for buyers of securities backed by them. Investment banks have said that they provided adequate disclosures, while also taking more than $100 billion in their own write-downs.

In a statement Saturday, Clayton chairman and chief executive Frank Filipps acknowledged a cooperation agreement.

"We have complied with a subpoena to produce due diligence reports on various pools of loans that we had reviewed for clients and on loans that had exceptions to lenders/seller guidelines and were eventually purchased," he said.

"This information that we provided to the attorney general is the same information that we provided to our clients."

The mortgage business boomed from 2002 to 2006, generating lucrative fees for mortgage brokers, lenders, credit rating firms, investment banks and many investors. Investment banks hired companies like Clayton to evaluate samples of loans to determine whether they complied with the law and met the lending standards that mortgage companies said they were using. Loans that did not were classified as exceptions."
Wonder whose watch this has happened on? I see how the country ran now- freebies to the bankers and the taxpayers to bail out the rich again.

[centennialdawg]

According to the Bloomberg report out in December, 2007, the percent of subprime mortgages is about 10% and the rate of all mortgages in the U.S. is about 2%.

Also, about 13% of all mortgages are late, but not currently in default.

I guess that is the reason they are doing an investigation, huh?

Another little tidbit
"Talk back: Is owning a home a stretch for you?

Across the country, housing prices have risen on average about 45% over the past six years, according to the National Association of Realtors, a trade organization. (That rate of increase is now slowing, mostly because of the mortgage-lending crisis.)

By contrast, the median income for working-age households (those headed by someone under 65) is down 4% since 2000, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of Census Bureau data. That's a drop of about $2,400 a year. "
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com...rOwnAHome.aspx
Bush has got us rocking and rolling- the trade unions led the workers to better wages and conditions and hours. I don't think we have the backbone for that now. I'd say 50-55 hours a week in the mines is about avg. Way I got it figured, the UMWA pension I'm entitled to should be about 300 per month and the bunch I work for now has a company funded pension of 50 dollars per month per year for service and a 100% match on the 401k (up to 6% of wages)and by the time it rolls around the SS should be about 2k. So I guess my generation did alright- I'm gonna let the next group have the money trouble.

[imported_elp6n]

Congress Sends Economic Aid Plan to Bush
2/7/2008
WASHINGTON - Congress, facing the prospect of an election-year recession, passed an emergency plan that rushes rebates of $600 to $1,200 to most taxpayers and $300 checks to disabled veterans, the elderly and other low-income people. President Bush indicated he would sign the measure.

House passage by a 380-34 vote Thursday came a few hours after Senate leaders ended a drawn-out stalemate over the bill. Still, by congressional standards, lawmakers approved the legislation with exceptional speed to jolt the weak economy. The plan, which adds $168 billion to the deficit over two years, is intended to provide cash for people to spend and tax relief for businesses to make new investments _ boosts for an economy battered by a housing downturn and credit crunch.

Rebate checks could begin arriving in May. They would be based on 2007 tax returns, which are due April 15.

The Senate's 81-16 vote capped more than a week of political maneuvering. The logjam broke when majority Democrats dropped their demand that rescue proposal offer jobless benefits, heating aid for the poor and tax breaks for the home building and energy industries.

GOP senators blocked those ideas, but agreed to add $300 rebates for older people and disabled veterans to a $161 billion measure the House passed last week.

Bush called the bill "robust, broad-based, timely, and it will be effective." The compromise, he said in a statement after the Senate acted, was "an example of bipartisan cooperation at a time when the American people most expect it." The White House said Bush would sign the bill sometime next week.

The legislation would deliver rebates _ $600 for individuals, $1,200 for couples _ to most taxpayers, plus an additional $300 per child. Individuals making up to $75,000 a year and couples earning up to $150,000 would get the full rebate, with those making more than that or too little to owe taxes getting smaller checks.

People who paid no income taxes but earned at least $3,000 _ including through Social Security or veterans' disability benefits _ would get a $300 rebate.

"We believe the stimulus, the way it is targeted, will put money into the hands of those who will spend it immediately, injecting demand into the economy and therefore creating jobs," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told colleagues.

The measure also includes steps to boost the ailing housing market. It would temporarily raise the limit on Federal Housing Administration loans and the cap on loans that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can buy to $729,750.

The package was the product of a rare spate of bipartisan cooperation on Capitol Hill, where Democrats and Republicans teamed with the White House on a bill that fell far short of both parties' priorities but could draw broad consensus.

An early agreement forged by Pelosi and Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, along with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson enjoyed a fast and smooth ride through the House, with lawmakers loath to stand in the way of a plan that could address their constituents' economic worries in advance of November's elections.

But it bogged down in the closely divided Senate, where Democrats were determined to exact a political price from Republicans by forcing them into tough votes on whether to add popular items such as $14.5 billion in jobless aid for those whose unemployment benefits have run out, $1 billion in heating aid for the poor and tax breaks for energy companies, including coal producers.

Senate Democratic leaders paired those items with rebates for older Americans and disabled veterans and threatened that Republicans would have to accept them or risk being blamed for leaving those politically powerful groups out of the stimulus plan.

In the end, though, Democrats couldn't draw enough support for their $205 billion alternative to break a GOP filibuster blocking it.

The turnaround in the Senate came after Democrats on Wednesday fell just one vote short of overcoming the Republican objections and pressing ahead with their more costly plan.

They relented Thursday and allowed a vote on a more limited proposal that included the rebates for the elderly and veterans, plus language designed to prevent illegal immigrants from getting the checks.

"I could have played around with this and tried to pick up that 60th vote, but I made a commitment to get this bill done before (Feb. 15), and we did that," said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

The retreat came after Pelosi sided with Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and urged the Senate to stop its infighting and pass the bill.

Thirty-three Republicans joined 46 Democrats and the Senate's two independents to pass the measure. Sixteen Republican senators voted against the plan.

The two Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, skipped the vote. The Republican front-runner, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, cast his first vote of the year on the bill, voting "yes." McCain had missed the vote the evening before.

Reid defended his decision to try to pressure Republicans on the larger proposal by offering it as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition along with the rebates for the elderly and veterans. "I feel very strongly that we did the right thing," Reid said.

Democrats said Republicans would pay a political price for their opposition.

"If today (Republicans) are squirming because they voted 'no,' that's what democracy is all about," said New York Sen. Charles Schumer, the head of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee. "The political chips will fall where they may."

But Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said: "Discretion is the better part of valor. The best thing for us to do is declare a big victory that we've achieved; namely, getting the rebate checks to 20 million seniors and 250,000 disabled veterans."

Some Republicans expressed reservations that the rebate checks would help much. Other lawmakers worried about expanding the budget deficit.

"We have to remember that every dollar being spent on the stimulus package is being borrowed from our children. And our children's children," said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who voted against the bill.