Lies, Lies, and Damned Lies -- Mike Rogers' Stimulus E-Mail

There's an old joke that there are three kinds of lies -- lies, damned lies, and statistics.

In Livingston County, the joke's punch line might be modified to "lies, damned lies, and a Mike Rogers' email."

Our congressional representative's email explaining his No vote on the just-passed stimulus bill, received Friday (February 13, 2009), starts off with the whopper that the stimulus package includes "$30 million to save a mouse habitat in San Francisco." "San Francisco" is code for "Nancy Pelosi," which is intended to stir up the women-hating innards of the conservative GOP-base.

Unfortunately, as this piece on Daily Kos shows, there is no San Francisco mouse habitat money. It's just one of the lies that Republicans have been peddling across the country to try to stir up outrage against the stimulus.

But the really big whopper is Rogers' claim that he backs a plan that will deliver more jobs. And that plan would be -- tax cuts! In his email Rogers insists that "the alternative stimulus bill I voted for will create 6.2 million jobs nationally."

Except he offers absolutely no data to back that up, not the name of even one economist who believes tax cuts outperform government spending when it comes to creating jobs.

It is simply not true. Government spending delivers more immediate economic activity than does a cut in taxes -- as much as $1.73 compared to about $1.03 for tax cuts.

Furthermore, Rogers' email shows that he fundamentally misunderstands the type of economic crisis we are in right now. He says his plan will help Michigan families "save money."

Right now, we don't really want people to save money, as contradictory as that may sound. We need people to spend money, to buy things, so that businesses will feel motivated to hire back some of the people they have laid off. In a recession, falling demand is the problem, not a low savings rate.

But in times like these, people who have jobs generally are worried about the future so they save money instead of spending it. That's why a stimulus plan of mostly tax cuts would fail. There is no guarantee people would spend the money. Much of it would be saved or used to pay down credit card or other debt.

And there is no guarantee that those who did spend it would spend it in the U.S. They might take a trip outside the country, for example, which is why all that money spent in Iraq did nothing to stimulate our economy (save for a few companies like Blackwater.)

Government has to be the spender of last resort in this climate.

And tax cuts would be of little benefit to people who don't have jobs.

Rogers, who thinks he should be the next governor of Michigan, doesn't undestand this. Or he does and is lying about it.