Majeres' Musings

The media just might be starting to wake up and catch up to bloggers who have been reporting this fiasco for weeks.   The everything for all and nothing in particular is finally getting some punches thrown at it.  It also shows how far Jack Layton is willing to go to base his speaking point lies.

snipped>

FROM THE SUN OTTAWA

Today's tour of taxpayer hell takes us to Paul Martin's great government garage sale and giveaway, where the prime minister has something for everyone and no one leaves without a piece of the public treasury.

At the bargain-budget table, we find a most unusual spending goodie worth a whopping $4.5 billion that may not exist for federal programs yet to be invented.

The ka-ching collection in question is known formally as Bill C-48, informally as the NDP budget amendment, and affectionately as Layton's Larceny.

Crafted in hotel room

Crafted by Martin and NDP leader Jack Layton in a Toronto hotel room in late April, the spending package was the price extorted by the New Democrats for propping up the minority Liberal government.

Since its introduction in Parliament, the bill has attracted a barrage of criticism from business and taxpayer groups. The Conservatives are again threatening to defeat the Liberals over it.

For once, so much howling indignation is more than political posturing. In this case, it is all perfectly justified.

This is the bill that political hucksters built, at worst an act of fiscal recklessness that should make even Liberals blush.

At best, it is a complete hoax that suckered the NDP, and not a dime of the promised spending will ever leave the public purse.

It's all in the fine print.

First, the government is putting the cash before the cause -- the supposedly critical programs all this loot is allegedly going to have either not been identified or simply don't exist.

That explains why the bill is deliberately vague in allocating the $4.5 billion.

For instance, the NDP have been boasting the deal will provide students with "immediate relief from soaring tuition costs."

Yet the actual bill before the Commons provides "an amount not exceeding $1.5 billion ... for supporting training programs and enhancing access to post-secondary education, to benefit, among others, aboriginal Canadians."

Lower college tuition? Don't bet your books on that one.

Similarly, the Dippers have been decrying Conservative attempts to hold up the bill, saying the nation's homeless simply cannot wait another minute for help.

But again, the bill is so vague as to be virtually meaningless, providing a $1.6 billion for "affordable housing, including housing for aboriginal Canadians."

Not the faintest idea

We called five ministries most likely to be on the receiving end of the $4.5 billion, and no one seemed to have the faintest idea how all that loot is going to be spent.

Conservative members of the Commons finance committee wanted to summon ministers to explain what their prospective departments will be providing for this mountain of tax money. Not a single minister appeared.

Part of the reason no one seems to know how all this cash will be spent is there is a good chance it won't be. Again, the fine print in the bill specifically states that the money for Martin's big NDP giveaway can only be taken from the government's annual surplus in each of the next two fiscal years -- and only after $4 billion has gone towards the debt.

In practice, here is how the money will flow -- or more likely, won't flow: First, nothing can flow anywhere until the government determines if it has a surplus, and that calculation cannot be done until the books are closed sometime around August of next year.

In other words, nothing is happening until long after Martin is expected to call the next election.

If there were, say, $3 billion left at the end of the government's fiscal year, the legislation stipulates $2 billion has to go to pay down the national debt and, in theory, the remaining $1 billion would go towards the promised $4.5 billion in NDP pet projects.

Balance from surplus

The balance of $3.5 billion would have to come from the surplus (if there is one after another $2 billion debt paydown) at the end of the second year, around August 2007.

Finance officials also caution that any year-end emergencies -- akin to the SARS outbreak or mad-cow crisis -- would also be funded from any surplus ahead of the Martin-Layton deal.

Of course, if the surplus is less than the $2 billion allocated for debt reduction, not a dime will flow to anything in the bill.

In that case, Layton will join the homeless, students and aboriginals as the latest Canadians to be screwed at Paul Martin's great government garage sale.

unsnipped<

cheers :) majere

PS unrelated:  having an unintelligent psycho-pathic bully, Tyson get the crap knocked out of him with millions in debt makes my next half hour go pretty good also.