Wonkette

Dorkus W. Dildo had a press conference today, in his garden. He is very rich and has an entire hospital to attend to him and bombs anything that makes him confused and no matter what crime he does, he never gets sent to prison, so he is exactly like ordinary poor Americans like you. Bush Junior has heard about how maybe the “economic” is a problem, so he told those losers who still have to act like he’s important — you know, the White House correspondents — that he “figured out” what was wrong and guess what, it’s Congress, which has Democrats. MORE »

While Congress and the President keep talking about rebate checks, the real question on everyone’s lips is: When? The answer is that the IRS would probably start mailing out checks at the end of June, assuming Congress and the President did this thing quickly. The real question, though, is whether you’d get a check even if you didn’t owe any income taxes. If you had to pay $800 (or $1,600 for marrieds) in income taxes to earn the full rebate, fully 40 percent of the country wouldn’t qualify. But, if our illustrious leaders make it “fully refundable,” meaning that you’d get a “rebate” even if you didn’t pay that much in taxes, it would basically be a rebate on your Social Security payments. But Jason Furman of the Brookings Institute swears that it wouldn’t affect the so-called Social Security Trust Fund in the least, so I guess that’s ok then. [CNN]

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified in front of the House Budget Committee today and gave, like, clear, concise and helpful answers to the committee. It made me feel all funny inside. He said that a stimulus package should probably be between $50 and $150 billion; that it shouldn’t extend Bush’s expiring tax cuts; and that “putting money into the hands of households and firms that would spend it in the near term” — individual tax rebates and “bonus depreciation” which is some complex way of saying “tax cuts for businesses for buying stuff” — would be desirable. That’s the major part of the Democrats’ plan (and not the one backed by conservative House Republicans) but he also wants them not to throw a bunch of stuff in there to muck it all up, which is probably the part they just haven’t officially released yet. [Raw Story]

Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle “Pearl Necklace” Bachmann joined in with a bunch of her Republican colleagues to unveil their stimulus package, which mostly involves… reducing the corporate tax rate? Way to get the memo, boys. But the ever-clever Michelle had some news for the nay-sayers: Minnesotans don’t need the Democrats’ stinkin’ tax rebate because they like to work. Sayeth Michelle: “I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We’re the workingest state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours, we have people that are working two jobs.” That’s right, Michelle’s damn proud to be from a state where her constituents (likely not the ones who voted for her, but, quibbles) have to work two jobs to make ends meet. That’s the American Dream, isn’t it? [Think Progress]

Sometimes, I guess it’s that first taste of forbidden pleasure that makes a formerly chaste individual into a raging ball of hormone-driven impulses. With the Democratic Congress, it was apparently the utter lack of constituent backlash when they waived their own pay-as-you-go rules for tax cuts just in time for Christmas that has made them want to do it again and again and again. This time, they’re not even waiting for the legislation to come down to the wire or making any excuses!

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Everyone thinks the economy sucks, so all the politicians are busy crafting plans to make us think the economy doesn’t suck. Naturally, Bush has one idea and Congressional Democrats have another, but their plans all have one thing in common: let’s get people to buy more crap! Oh, what good little capitalists we are!

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