What a crock of stimulus

Via Michelle Malkin, this excerpt from The Examiner explains "stimulus" Washington style:

If somebody grabbed your wallet and then handed you back a $20 bill, would you be grateful? Realizing the money was yours to begin with, you would probably call the cops rather than thank the thief.

President Bush’s latest gimmick to stimulate the economy by giving back to taxpayers $800 of their own money is the Washington equivalent of the “generous” thief. The biggest fairy tale in Washington isn’t Barack Obama’s voting record on the war in Iraq, but the notion peddled by Republicans and Democrats alike that the government has a big pot of its own money that it generously gives to people by “injecting” it into the economy as a stimulus.

In fact, government has only our money or money it borrows from lenders. The problem is it costs the government a major portion of every dollar it takes from us in collecting it and paying the interest on dollars it borrows. Why not just let us keep our money in the first place?

Want real economic stimulus? Make the 2003 tax cuts permanent. And slash government spending by 5%, just five percent. I've heard it said before: "any manager who can't cut their budget by 10% should be fired." Of course, government isn't the real world, so we'll set their goal at half that, just to make it easy on them.

Want to jump-start home buying? Reduce property taxes. Let people know that when they find a house they think they can afford, the taxes added on to their mortgage payment won't make the house unaffordable.

Want to reduce the price of oil? Have a big oil company announce that they're increasing production/supply or, God forbid, that they're going to start drilling in ANWR.

The worst part is that Republicans in Congress have gone along with the Defeat-ocrats in all this. Neil Cavuto was right: the Defeat-ocrats have truly won the day.