CBO: Obama Stimulus Will Hurt the Economy

The CBO says that the Obama/Reid/Pelosi Debt Plan will actually do more long-term harm to the economy than if government did nothing, the Washington Times reports (h/t Club for Growth):

President Obama’s economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing.

CBO estimates that by 2019 the Senate legislation would reduce GDP by 0.1 percent to 0.3 percent on net. [The House bill] would have similar long-run effects, CBO said in a letter to Sen. Judd Gregg, New Hampshire Republican, who was tapped by Mr. Obama on Tuesday to be Commerce Secretary.

While it is super to see what we’ve been saying all along completely confirmed, that means I won’t get the Death Star I was going to ask the government for.   Recent research indicated that to build the Death Star would take about $16.5 Septillian dollars.  And if Obama et al’s calculations are correct, the more we spend, the more debt we drive this country into the bigger homes everyone can buy.  According to that logic, building a Death Star at a whopping 1.4 times trillion times the current deficit is exactly what America needs right now.

So, despite this set-back, I’m going to go with the CBO on this one and shelve those plans for a bit.