Back in June, The MacIver Institute warned taxpayers that a second stimulus package was making its way through Congress. At the time, the media was reporting that the package had “failed to gain the necessary support” to pass the Senate.
We suggested taxpayers might still want to hold on tightly to their wallets.
Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal is reported that the Senate voted to end debate on the bill to “provide $26 billion in emergency aid to state and local governments to expand Medicaid and avoid teacher layoffs.”
The bill provides approximately $16 billion in funding to states to help cover their rising costs due to an expansion of the Medicaid program and $10 billion to school districts to avoid the layoffs of teachers this fall. Democrats believe the bill will save 140,000 teacher jobs.
The Son of a Stimulus package will supposedly be paid for with an $11 billion dollar tax increase on corporations, the repeal of the “advanced earned-income tax credit” and $12 billion dollars in cuts to food stamp benefits. The food stamp benefit cuts are not scheduled to go in to effect until 2014.
This new spending bill passed despite estimates from the National Debt Commission that “the nation’s federal debt next year is expected to exceed $14 trillion — about $47,000 for every U.S. resident.”
We would do our “I told you so” dance if our exploding debt wasn’t such a serious threat to the future of our country.
Read our original prediction here. Click here for the latest Washington update from The Hill.