SON OF STIMULUS

Son of Stimulus

Congress is now looking to spend an additional $174 Billion on a jobs creation package; adding to our already exploding deficit. Republicans are referring to it as “Son of Stimulus”.

Traveling across the country, signs adorn the highways professing the projects under the ‘American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’. Funny how most to the time those signs only appear in states with a Democratic majority or governor? Is this because, only Democratic States received this money? Or is it because Republicans don’t want to give credit to a successful program? What’s even more suspect is the areas where these signs are, no or little work is being done.

My Friend Imran had an excellent idea on how to stimulate the economy early on in this economic fiasco. It provided a bottom up solution, with no long term risk to the government or the country’s economy. Here was his proposal from one year ago, http://www.youtube.com/user/imrananwar#p/u/25/D00tGsS7hm8. It made perfect sense, empowered the people, put a tremendous amount of money back in the economy and would have resulted in a rapid turn around, and probably have averted the terrible unemployment we are experiencing now.

My suggestion is if Congress decides to move forward with ‘Son of Stimulus’ they do the following:

1) Provide the money only to new businesses that would create 10 or more jobs or to small business whose presence is critical to a community and is not a subsidiary of a major corporation.

2) Simplify the means of distribution, as a grant through the Treasury Department.

3) The applying business must be a viable idea with a business plan certified by a CPA and an unrelated business law firm as to it validity. Must be registered with the state and locality where they are headquartered. No pre-requisites on what type of business.

4) Businesses would need to provide an accounting of how the money was spent, again certified by a CPA.

That’s it. Keep it simple (stupid). If 20,000 businesses applied, the suggested amount of ‘Son of Stimulus’ would be $8.7 Million per business. The tax revenues alone would pay the total amount back in less than 5 years. 100’s of thousands of new jobs would be created in a very short period of time. Jobs that are not government jobs, or lining the pockets of America’s fat cat corporate executives.

Think about it.