8/14/2019 Stimulus Release 012909 Final

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For Immediate Release

Bigger GovernmentSpending Package Will Stagnate,

Rather Than Stimulate, says Small Business Advocate(Except for Appropriations Chairman David Obeys son, whose client gets billions)

Washington, DC The so-called stimulus package headed for the U.S. Senate, which could

end up costing over a trillion dollars, is little more than a bloated and wasteful wish list, forgovernment bureaucracies, which will actually cause far more harm to the American economy

than good, according to the Institute for Liberty, a Washington, DC-based small business

advocacy organization.

This is less a stimulus package than it is a stagnation package, said Andrew Langer, IFLs

President. It is a massive increase in the funding and power of already -bloated federal

and state bureaucracy which more closely resembles a a stagnant swamp than the great,

roaring river Americans want in an economy.

Even the most cursory reading of this bill, reveals glaringly obvious waste, pork, and

funds being funneled to powerful insiderslike the 2.25 billion going to lobbying clients

of Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obeys son, Craig, chief lobbyist for the

National Parks Conservation Association. Weve got money going to re-sod the National

Mall. Weve got tens of billions in broadband funding modeled after the USDAs current

broadband expansion program, which has been panned by Democrats, Republicans and

the press as the very model of a failed bureaucracy. Worse, it would pile on even more

federal regulation in the form of so-called net neutrality mandates. Is this what they

meant by change?

This is business as usual in Washington -- spending packages groaning under the weight

of unnecessary, ill-advised, and politically driven spending. Given the demand for

change in the last elections, IFL had hoped that Congress might have gotten the message

to change the way it does business. Clearly they havent, and the Institute for Liberty will

continue to press that message with policymakers, and with the American people directly,

concluded Langer.

A think tank focused on free-markets and government powers that are limited and transparent,

IFL also injects the perspective of small business into public policy debates. Central to this is the

role that small business will play in economic recovery. In criticizing this stagnation package,

the organization notes the emphasis on transferring huge sums of money to large entities, ratherthan freeing the marketplace. IFL has long spoken about the problems of wasteful spending,

most recently about the role that vast amounts of spending have had in recent political scandals.

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