Tax...... Rebate?

If you have watched the news, opened a paper or visited a news website in the past 24 hours then you already know what this post is about. Let me start out by saying that I am a republican. I also believe in supporting the president. With that said......

The government issued a statement yesterday that they had decided to give tax rebates this coming summer in order to stimulate the economy. Any individual earning less than $75,000 a year will get $600, any couple making less than $150,000 will get $1200. Any couple making more than $150,000 and less than $175,000 would get a partial rebate and there is a similar situation with individuals. Here is the kicker, all people earning a paycheck but make too little to pay taxes will get $300 each. The hope is that people with go buy more things they don't need and put some much needed money into the economy. Here are the problems I have with this...

1) Why the phase out? So the people who pay the most taxes out of anyone get squat back in this deal. Oh yeah, that seems fair :P

2) Can you really call it a "rebate" when you are giving it to people who never even paid taxes? I am all about supporting the poor, but their consolation for making so little is that they get excused from paying taxes.... adding a $300 give away from the government is ridiculous.

3) In order to give this money out, the government has to borrow it. We are adding $150 billion to the federal deficit which has to be borrowed from China. All so that the government can bail out people who bought merchandise, a house, a car, or a who knows what that they couldn't afford and have now found themselves in trouble. Is this the governments way of telling us that financial responsibility is no longer important? These people need to pay the consequences of their greed and maybe next time they will have a better understanding of what they "need".

4) The majority of this money (for those who spend it) will likely go towards products imported from China. As Huckabee pointed out this morning, we are borrowing from the Chinese money which will in large part be spent on items imported from China....whose economy are we going to end up stimulating?

Overall, this is a HORRIBLE idea. Huckabee had some great points about this. When questioned about it he first said that he applauded the Bush Administration for doing something to attempt to stimulate the lagging economy although he wasn't sure it was the best choice. He then mentioned the likelihood that this move would benefit China much more than the US. And then he said, "you know, if we are going to borrow this money, why not put it into something the country really needs?" He mentioned the need for money to expand existing highway, airport, and rail infrastructure. Being a transportation person, I ate that up.

This country, and this state in particular, are in a HUGE budget crises as far as roads go. TxDOT's budget does not even cover the maintenance on it's existing roads much less the construction of much needed infrastructure. For those of you who wonder why we have so many toll roads, that's it. We don't pay enough in taxes to pay for free highways, so the state must borrow the money to build them and pay it back using tolls. I thought Huckabee's statement had significant merit.

Now, as for me.... I'll take my rebate. But I'm not taking it to the mall like the government wants me to. It will go one of two places. It will either go towards the cost to bank our baby's cord blood in order to preserve precious stem cells that can be used to treat an increasing number of diseases including leukemia, or it will go into our child's college fund.