Understanding The Stimulus Package

The Stimulus Package There are several key points featured in the Obama Administration's Stimulus Package: Health, Education and Infrastructure. Understanding this stimulus package is difficult at best until these key points are viewed as intended. Healthcare Critical to any society is maintaining good health care for all. Imagine a society where illness is rampant. The cost to government for negligently ignoring the sick, dying and those who will become ill due to lack of proper health care will necessarily be borne by taxpayers in one form or another. Originally, health care was provided in the US by employers because many workplace environments were dangerous. Employers worried about lawsuits from improper adherence to worker safety. This aspect of health care is largely forgotten by many corporations and small businesses. Health care became an employee benefit offered by employers. In time, employers who offered the very best health care benefits competed against other employers. As a result of health care becoming a hugely profitable industry, health care benefits became unaffordable for businesses and costs were passed on to employees, reducing salaries and future income. So, the focus on health care in the US is one that should be part of a stimulus package in order to allow employee salaries to stabilize, businesses to afford health care benefits for employees and to stabilize government programs tied to health care. Education Over the past several decades, education has become a virtual industry. From elementary school to college, the cost to educate a single child has become astronomical. Many college students leave college paying huge student loans only to find their degree is inadequate to today's hi-tech industries, leaving many college graduates without employment. Re-education and reining in education costs is crucial to stabilizing the economy of the US. No other country of the world spends as much on education and yet, the end result is lack of adequate education for current industries. Blue-collar jobs are virtually extinct. Many people will require some form of re-education in order to fit into today's employment market. Infrastructure No country can call itself safe for citizens if roads are deteriorating, bridges collapse and housing is built on unsafe, polluted tracts of land. The Obama Stimulus Package rightly addresses this issue by providing funding for numerous infrastructure projects. However, an enormous amount of oversight will be required to avoid unscrupulous contractors from throwing good money into bad contracts. The Stimulus Package Network The Stimulus Package is in actuality a networked plan that some may conclude involves "earmarks". The reality is that health care, education and infrastructure has been seriously ignored as a budget priority for decades. As a result, jobs in these sectors have vanished in huge numbers. The biggest problem attached to the Stimulus Package is controlling free-spending politicians who will use funding to the detriment of its expressed purpose: Shoring up the economy and helping to reinvest in national priorities. If Stimulus funding is spent foolishly, the end result will be higher taxes on the middle and working classes with no relief or financial stability. Without full and transparent accountability, the Stimulus Package could become a national liability.