Originally Posted by Rostov

This is great news for many Flight Attendants, Ramp workers and other professions which have seen and would have otherwise seen massive layoffs. As for the overall price of the package it makes for easy simple minded attacks to say "we spending too much" but I've yet to see one realistic solution to either the spending issues of our government or the tax code from either party.

Every single financial guru and expert out there agrees the cost of doing too little or nothing during this current economic crunch is very high, versus the cost of aiming too high is negligible.

For those who complain about government spending I almost always find you want strong national defense (that doesn't come cheap and guess what its getting more expensive (in fact pilots are still leaving the service at record pace right now even with airline hiring almost nonexistent) . Almost no one [a big majority] in this country has actually saved enough for retirement or is not on track to in order to not need a significant amount of their social security. And every one of my conservative parents and parent in laws are absolutely reliant on Medicare. Between those 3 alone which are insanely popular you have the vast majority of government spending. Every thing else people complain about (foreign aid, culture programs, UN funding, you name it) even if combined together would not make an appreciable dent in our deficit or long term debt.

So that leaves you with one answer, if your costs/spending are fix'd (which SS, Medicare, Defense basically are) your left with Taxes. There is no free lunch, so pay your damned taxes and support meaningful tax reform that will actually INCREASE government revenue (flat tax fails miserably at that btw.)