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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Dec. 15, 2008 / 18 Kislev 5769

Better than a bailout

By Jeff Jacoby

Jeff Jacoby
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | During last week's battle over a federal rescue for Detroit's automakers - after a deal had passed the House but before it collapsed in the Senate - the Gallup Organization summarized its latest findings: "Bailouts Aren't Increasing Consumer Confidence."


To put it mildly. More than 60 percent of Americans now rate the economy "poor"; a whopping 82 percent expect economic conditions to get even worse. "Americans seem to be suffering from so-called 'bailout fatigue,' " Gallup observed, "opposing not only the auto bailout, but also the original $700 billion financial-institutions bailout. . . What has been happening in Washington, D.C., has seemed to do little to boost consumer confidence and may be doing just the opposite."


It's no wonder Americans are dispirited. For months they've watched the Bush administration, congressional Democrats, and the Federal Reserve fling hundreds of billions of dollars at this economic crisis. Yet the more Washington has spent, the worse the crisis has grown.


Unemployment is at a 26-year high. Stocks are in the dumper. Sales are tumbling. Retirement funds are bleeding. The deepest recession since World War II is underway, and Washington seems to think that the way to make things better is to keep pumping out staggering amounts of money it doesn't have for the relief of powerful corporations like Citicorp, AIG, JP Morgan Chase, and Fannie Mae.


No one actually knows how much all these "bailouts" will eventually add up to, but Bloomberg calculated recently that Americans are on the hook for as much as $7.7 trillion. Other estimates go even higher. The investment website Fool.com puts the total amount pledged - "the combined total of existing and announced outlays from the Federal Reserve and from US government agencies that are directly attributable to the financial crisis" - at nearly $8.6 trillion.


This is spending on a gargantuan scale, the largest outlay in US history. Granted, some of it is for loan guarantees that may never be needed. But there is also no guarantee that these mammoth commitments will do anything to revivify the financial markets. They haven't yet. Yes, Americans should be dismayed. The government's bailout-and-stimulus frenzy is driving the national debt to stratospheric levels - remember, this is all borrowed money - while doing little to invigorate the economy.


US Representative Louie Gohmert has a better idea. The third-term Texas Republican proposes to strip Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson of his authority to spend the $350 billion remaining in the $700 billion bailout fund Congress created in October. Instead of being doled out to well-connected banks and Wall Street investment firms, the money would be used to finance a two-month federal tax holiday for every American taxpayer.


Each month, Americans pay about $101 billion in personal income taxes, plus $66 billion in Social Security and Medicare withholding. So a two-month reprieve from these taxes would actually cost less than the $350 billion left in Paulson's bailout pot, Gohmert points out, "but it would provide significantly more relief to taxpayers as well as a greater economic boost." Giving Americans two months off from paying federal income and payroll taxes would prove a far more potent "stimulus" than any plan dreamed up by Treasury aides and Capitol Hill bureaucrats. Anything a few hundred Washington operatives can do with that bailout money, 150 million American workers and entrepreneurs can do better, faster, and smarter.


"Imagine," says former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who backs the Gohmert proposal, "how many people could pay down some of their debt, how many will be able to rebuild some of their retirement funds, how many . . . might start a new business or expand their existing business." And all without the need for bureaucratic oversight or centralized control.


Granted, a two-month tax holiday isn't ideal. The best economic medicine right now - the best way to stimulate new spending, investment, and saving - would be a permanent reduction in marginal tax rates. Gohmert understands that a Democratic-controlled Congress isn't going to enact long-term tax relief, so he isn't pushing for it. But those bailout funds have already been legislated; the question is how they should be spent. Plow the money into new corporate welfare for mortgage lenders and insurance giants? Or leave it in the hands of the men and women who earned it, to be used as they deem best?

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Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.

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