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AT: Spending DA AT: Spending DA.........................................................................................................................................................................................1 AT: Spending [1/3].......................................................................................................................................................................................2 AT: Spending [2/3].......................................................................................................................................................................................3 AT: Spending [3/3].......................................................................................................................................................................................4 1AR Spending Ext 1 – Econ Low................................................................................................................................................................5 1AR Spending Ext 2 – Aid Now..................................................................................................................................................................6 1AR Spending Ext 3 – Other Spending.......................................................................................................................................................7 1AR Spending Ext 6 – Deficit Spending.....................................................................................................................................................8 1AR Spending Ext 7 – No Impact...............................................................................................................................................................9

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AT: Spending [1/3] 1. The Economy is crashing – housing market, oil, and health care Sanders 7/10/08 San Francisco Chronicle [Debra J, The bad news economy, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/07/09/EDJK11LLJ6.DTL] America's sky is falling. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll conducted last month found that 78 percent of Americans think that the country is heading in the wrong direction. Of course, almost 4 in 5 Americans think the country is heading to heck in a handbasket. The news media are stuck in one gear when it comes to reporting economic news - Armageddon. As Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters so aptly noted, many journalists are besotted with Barack Obama. That makes them open to any bad news that can be tacked onto Republican George W. Bush. But it's more than liberal bias. Journalists are convinced that the American economy is collapsing and going down the tube, because our industry is collapsing and going down the tube. So if you say the economy is "slowing," as Republican presidential candidate John McCain has said, you're insensitive. If you are in touch, you are supposed to ignore the 0.6-percent GDP growth in the fourth-quarter of 2007 and 1 percent growth in the first-quarter of 2008, because that belies the belief that the U.S. economy is in recession. Remember the "misery index" - the combined rate of unemployment and inflation that peaked at 22 percent under President Jimmy Carter? Forget it. Not enough misery. In 2004, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry had to throw in extra statistics to inflate the Bush misery index, because the combined unemployment and I nflation rate was about 8 percent. Lately, news stories report on American fears about inflation, without reporting the rate of inflation. It's about 4.2 percent. With the unemployment rate at 5.5 percent, the "misery index" is just under 10 percent. Yes,

prices at the pump are forcing some Americans to cut back and have had a ripple effect throughout the economy. After years of arguing that greener energy policies don't hurt the economy, but instead create jobs, Democrats and talking heads should be cooing about the new economic horizons unfolding. The housing bubble burst. A lot of people - including this writer - have seen the value of their homes drop, and those who have to gasoline prices are up. Granted, higher

sell quickly won't get the price they expected two years ago. Is there anyone who did not think that eventually housing prices would deflate? Is there a new law of economics that says: What goes up cannot come down? The boost in the foreclosure rate to close to 2.5 percent shows the raw side of a market correction made worse by shabby lending practices that lured some people to buy homes they could not afford. Some families will experience the heartbreak of losing those homes, but also some families, who had been priced out of the market, now can reach for that dream. Thanks to improved federal regulations, they stand a better chance of holding onto it. Yes, there is bad news.

The stock market is down and the housing market probably won't begin to bounce back this year. The federal deficit is expected to hit $400 billion this year. Worse yet, Washington has promised Social Security and Medicare benefits without paying for them. As a result, according to former Comptroller General David Walker, every American owns a $175,000 share of Uncle

Health care costs have soared - and that has made it more expensive for businesses to operate and governments to provide services. It doesn't matter that people with cancer and other serious illnesses stand a better chance of beating the disease, and enjoy a higher quality of life. Americans Sam's unfunded liabilities.

expect health care costs to rise more slowly, even if they are getting considerably more effective care. And it doesn't help when some adults have to work two part-time jobs to make ends meet, but don't qualify for health care insurance at either. Do I worry about where this country is headed? Who doesn't? But what concerns me is that

expecting more goodies from their government - with someone else always paying for it.

Americans keep

The other thing that worries me: We have no idea how

good we have it.

2. Alternative Energy Aid Now – Hydro Power NHA 6/25/08 National Hydropower Association [House Appropriations Committee Approves Substantial Funding for DOE Waterpower Program, http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/partner/story?cid=3340&id=52886]

Washington, DC (June 25, 2008) - The National Hydropower Association is pleased to report that the House Appropriations Committee has allocated $40 million to the Department of Energy's R&D waterpower program. The measure represents a 400 percent increase over the previous allocation and represents a $37 million increase over the administration's budget request. "The Appropriations Committee showed tremendous leadership today by significantly increasing funding for the DOE waterpower R&D program," stated Linda Church Ciocci, NHA's executive director. "This funding revitalizes the federal program and paves the way for bringing new, clean hydropower technologies online in the next 20 years." 3. Federal Spending on other issues A. Iraq Schenwar 6/21/08 Scoop Independent News [Maya, Congress Funds Another Year of War, http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0806/S00300.htm] In a step that sealed the fate of Iraq war funding until next June, the House of Representatives voted on Thursday to approve $162 billion for the occupation, with no strings attached. The vote follows a series of compromises and revisions over the past two months, ultimately resulting in major concessions from Democrats. [Continues] White House Budget Director Jim Nussle was equally enthusiastic about the bill, telling Congressional Quarterly that the administration "obviously" approved of it. The legislation satisfies Bush's demands not only for fiscal year 2008 funding, but also for about half of the funding needed to support status quo operations in Iraq for 2009.

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AT: Spending [2/3] B. NASA Pasadena Star-News 7/6/08 [NASA: Don't blow support of Congress, http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/opinions/ci_9803622] FOR NASA, after years of struggling for more funding, the planets finally may be aligning. It's vital that the agency not do anything to squander this chance. Last week a Senate committee recommended a big boost of $2.6 billion in NASA's budget, including an extra $1 billion to speed up its next manned space program, Constellation. The full House approved the same increase in legislation it overwhelmingly passed earlier in the month. Accelerating Constellation's development is crucial. Otherwise, NASA is projecting a five-year gap between the retirement of space shuttles in 2010 and the launch of the next manned program. In that interim, U.S. astronauts would be stuck hitching rides aboard Russian space vehicles. The U.S. space program would be vulnerable to the whims of an authoritarian regime and vehicles that have recently suffered mechanical failures. A longer gap also would lead to greater job losses - including at the Kennedy Space Center, where up to 6,400 jobs are on the line.

4. Disads not intrinsic – there no reason why a congressman can’t pass our plan and cut funding in another area to offset the federal deficit 5. No Link – Federal funding for alternative energy programs would be a tradeoff from other programs KRNV 7/9/08 News Station [Senator Ensign offers a compromise on renewable energy, http://www.krnv.com/Global/story.asp?S=8643877] Senator John Ensign offered a compromise Tuesday that would encourage the development of renewable energy, expedite passage of the Housing bill and end concerns over "paying for" his amendment. "We all agree that as a country we need to encourage the development of renewable energy," Ensign said. "It is becoming clear that Senate Democrats will not allow a vote on this important amendment and, as a result, are blocking solar, wind and other renewable projects from moving forward." Ensign's compromise would reduce spending across the board, except for veterans, to pay for $8 billion of renewable energy tax incentives. This would represent a tiny fraction of federal spending, approximately a twentieth of a percent reduction in the budget over 10 years. 6. Deficit Spending is good for economic growth Mitchell 3/15/05 Heritage's chief expert on tax policy and the economy, PHD, Heritage Foundation [Daniel J, The Impact of Government Spending on Economic Growth, http://www.heritage.org/research/budget/bg1831.cfm]

The Keynesian Controversy. The economics of government spending is not limited to cost-benefit analysis. There is also the Keynesian debate. In the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes argued that government spending—particularly increases in government spending—boosted growth by injecting purchasing power into the economy.[2] According to Keynes, government could reverse economic downturns by borrowing money from the private sector and then returning the money to the private sector through various spending programs. This “pump priming” concept did not necessarily mean that government should be big. Instead, Keynesian theory asserted that government spending—especially deficit spending—could provide short-term stimulus to help end a recession or depression. The Keynesians even argued that policymakers should be prepared to reduce government spending once the economy recovered in order to prevent inflation, which they believed would result from too much economic growth. They even postulated that there was a tradeoff between inflation and unemployment (the Phillips Curve) and that government officials should increase or decrease government spending to steer the economy between too much of one or too much of the other. Keynesian economics was very influential for several decades and dominated public policy from the 1930s–1970s. The theory has since fallen out of favor, but it still influences policy discussions, particularly on whether or not changes in government spending have transitory economic effects. For instance, some lawmakers use Keynesian analysis to argue that higher or lower levels of government spending will stimulate or dampen economic growth.

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AT: Spending [3/3] 7. A slowdown in the US Economy would have no major effects on the global economy Merril Lynch 9/18/06 one of the world’s leading wealth management, capital markets and advisory companies, achieved high rankings for its equity and fixed income research in numerous regional and global investor surveys, such as Institutional Investor, The Wall Street Journal, LatinFinance, Asiamoney, Euromoney, Extel and Reuters. [U.S. Downturn Won’t Derail World Economy, http://www.ml.com/index.asp?id=7695_7696_8149_63464_70786_71164]

New York and London, September 18, 2006 — A sharp slowdown in the U.S. economy in 2007 is unlikely to drag the rest of the global economy down with it, according to a research report by Merrill Lynch’s (NYSE: MER) global economic team. The good news is that there are strong sources of growth outside the U.S. that should prove resilient to a consumer-led U.S. slowdown. Merrill Lynch economists expect U.S. GDP growth to slow to 1.9 percent in 2007 from 3.4 percent in 2006, but non-U.S. growth to decline by only half a percent (5.2 percent versus 5.7 percent). Behind this decoupling is higher non-U.S. domestic demand, a rise in intraregional trade and supportive macroeconomic policies in many of the world’s economies. Although some countries appear very vulnerable to a U.S. slowdown, one in five is actually on course for faster GDP growth in 2007. Asia, Japan and India appear well placed to decouple from the United States, though Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore are more likely to be impacted. European countries could feel the pinch, but rising domestic demand in the core countries should help the region weather the storm much better than in previous U.S. downturns. In the Americas, Canada will probably be hit, but Brazil is set to decouple. U.S. Slowdown Will Be Consumer-Led The much-vaunted housing market correction, which has finally hit the U.S. economy, has the potential to pull the U.S. to the brink of recession by early 2007. Judging by past experience, housing starts decline by 50 percent peak-to-trough and the correction lasts well over two years. This time around, the correction has the added twist that housing has become extremely overvalued — by 20 percent at least and perhaps as much as 40 percent. Merrill Lynch expects an outright decline in housing prices of about 5 percent next year. The combination of the decline in home prices and the slowing in the growth of housing stock is expected to reduce housing wealth by more than U.S. $1 trillion in 2007. This, in turn, will likely mean that U.S.consumers will spend 1 percent less for most of next year and double that figure if house price falls are more severe. The only bright spot is business investment, which is set to be robust due to healthy profit margins, high productivity growth and strong corporate balance sheets. Japan Is Global Star Japan appears better able to withstand a U.S. slowdown than any other country. For the first time in over a decade, the country’s financial system is flush with capital, and banks are eager to lend to corporations and households alike. Japan's export markets are far less reliant on the U.S. than they were in the 1990s, with 78 percent of its goods and services directed towards China and the rest of Asia. In addition, managers are reinvesting in their businesses for growth, which should sharply boost domestic demand. At the same time, Japanese companies are investing heavily in their workforce, forcing down the already low unemployment rate. Household consumption will probably be further boosted by low interest rates and a steady rate of income tax. The rest of Asia is more closely linked to the fortunes of the global economy. Taiwan and — to a lesser extent — Hong Kong and Singapore, could find it hard to escape the effects of a U.S. slowdown. However, the relative robustness of the non-U.S. economy, coupled with supportive macroeconomic policies in the larger Asian countries, should help the region weather slower U.S. growth, especially if the U.S. capex cycle is resilient. Even China, where U.S. exports amount to 8 percent of GDP, could be resilient if its leaders opt for an aggressive policy response. Euro Area Could Withstand Slower U.S. Growth Despite a strong historical correlation between the U.S. and the Euro area’s business cycle, the region has a good chance of avoiding the worst effects of a U.S. slowdown. For one thing, the Euro area’s GDP growth, though modest, is being driven by stronger domestic demand, not exports. Also, half of all exports are capital goods, which are expected to hold up more strongly than consumer goods. Euro area GDP is set to slow from 2.6 percent to 2.1 percent during 2007, but this is because of the impact on domestic demand of tighter fiscal policy.

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1AR Spending Ext 1 – Econ Low 2AC Sanders evidence indicates that the economy is crashing now because of the housing bubble, rising fuel and health care costs. Even if their evidence indicates that the economy is ok, our evidence is predictive that these problems fuel future economic downturn. And the Economy sucks Media Corp News 7/12/08 [Wall St. rattled by worries over mortgage giants, http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/359885/1/.html] NEW YORK - Wall Street endured heavy losses Friday amid sustained worries over the financial health of two big mortgagefinancing firms and lingering concerns about corporate earnings, traders said. The downward spiral was led by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as fears mounted about the financial stability of the two firms, which help prop up the vast US mortgage market, amid a lingering housing market slump. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 128.48 points (1.14 percent) to close at 11,100.54. The Nasdaq composite index shed 18.77 points (0.83 percent) to 2,239.08 and the Standard & Poor's 500 index declined 13.90 points (1.11 percent) to a close of 1,239.49. "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to be under assault in the headlines and marketplace," said Brad Sorenson, a research director at Charles Schwab and Company. The two firms are vital players in the mortgage-financing market which has been stressed by mounting home foreclosures and falling home prices. Concern about their financial health has rippled through Wall Street because the two firms own or guarantee over five trillion dollars in loans, or about 40 percent of the total value of home loans in the United States. Analysts said Freddie and Fannie's woes could spark fresh stress for the banking sector, which has failed to shake off a credit crunch that erupted last summer, and the wider economy. AFter losing some 50 percent at the opening, Freddie Mac's shares ended down 3.1 percent at 7.75 dollars while Fannie Mae dived 22 percent to 10.25 dollars. In other news, General Electric reported a drop in its second-quarter profit of six percent to 5.1 billion dollars as the massive US conglomerate largely weathered an economic storm. The industrial, financial and media giant said its profit amounted to 54 cents per share, which was in line with the forecasts of most Wall Street analysts. GE's stock finished barely unchanged at 27.66 dollars. In other stock action, Citigroup was down 0.5 percent at 16.19 dollars. Lehman Brothers lost 17 percent to 14.43 dollars. ExxonMobil was 0.7 percent lower at 85.48 dollars and General Motors gained 2.4 percent to 9.92 dollars. Traders said stock prices had also been pushed lower by another leap in world oil prices. A key oil futures contract traded in New York briefly struck a record 147.27 dollars a barrel in frenzied trading, partly in response to geopolitical jitters over Iran's nuclear program. The contract subsequently closed at 145.08 dollars. Some economists worry that rising oil costs could further slow US economic growth. Bond prices weakened as the yield on the 10-year US Treasury bond rose to 3.940 percent from 3.811 percent Thursday and that on the 30-year bond climbed to 4.517 percent against 4.421 percent. Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions. European stocks closed sharply lower as fears over the meltdown in the share prices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac swept across the Atlantic. In London, the FTSE 100 index plunged 2.69 percent to 5,261.60. In Paris the CAC 40 tumbled 3.09 percent to 4,100.64 and in Frankfurt the DAX ended down 2.41 percent at 6,153.30

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1AR Spending Ext 2 – Aid Now 2AC NHA evidence indicates that Congress is funding alternative energy now. Congress just authorized 400 million for the DOE hydropower program. This takes out any link uniqueness as Congressional funding now means that pork barrel spending would already have occurred. And the Recent Farm Bill authorized money for renewable energy sources KJCT News 7/3/08 [US Senator Ken Salazar in GJ to discuss 2008 Farm Bill, http://kjct8.com/Global/story.asp?S=8618897] In June, The US Congress passed the $300 billion 2008 Farm Bill. They had to override a veto by President Bush. Thursday, US Senator Ken Salazar visited Grand Junction to explain some points of the legislation he supported. As a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Salazar played a key role in writing the bill. About $40 billion will go to help support farmers and ranchers. The bill will also support renewable energy development, conservation programs and establish more food safety regulations. The bulk of the bill's funding will go toward putting good food on dinner tables across the country. "Two thirds of all the money of the Farm Bill goes to Meals on Wheels, to hot lunches, to fresh fruit and vegetable programs and 20 other nutrition programs that we have in the bill. So, this is a bill about food security for all of America," Senator Ken Salazar explained. The USDA is in the process of instituting the policies and regulations spelled out in the bill. In the coming months Congress will be holding oversight hearings to make sure those policies are being implemented properly.

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1AR Spending Ext 3 – Other Spending 2AC 3 – Group it – the federal government is spending money on various other issues such as Iraq and NASA. Congress just authorized massive federal spending for both these issues. More Ev. News Leader 7/12/08 [Funding amount should shock us, http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080712/OPINIONS03/807120306/1006/OPINIONS] Well, at last, at last, someone has brought to home an absolutely realistic means of comparing the cost of the war in Iraq to things the average American can understand. Rick Miles study, "Cost of Iraq war found in numbers," June 24, Ozarks Voices, is right on the money, no pun intended, and gives me comfort in realizing that at least one other person in this nation is capable of understanding the real cost of this war. It seems these days that the Congress of the United States is deaf, dumb and blind in the way they toss around these astronomical requests for funding, bandying about figures of BILLIONS of dollars as if they were everyday sums that will go away if they simply approve them and move along to something else. If simple comparison to everyday expenditures does not sink in or impress you, then try to picture this: a single billion crisp, new, one-dollar bills, tightly stacked would reach over 47- 1/3 MILES into the air. The cost of the Iraq war to date, some $750 billion, would make a stack of one-dollar bills over 35,500 miles tall, or sufficient to reach from Washington D.C., eastward around the Earth at the equator, back to Washington and continuing on to some spot in Asia a second time. Of course, it won't really do that because it went to Iraq, and what did that get us? When the president routinely asks for another $80 billion simply to continue funding for the war in Iraq, I would think the gasp of astonishment from disbelieving congressmen would be heard all the way to the West Coast. I know it surely leaves me short of breath.

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1AR Spending Ext 6 – Deficit Spending 2AC 6 – Deficit spending is good for the economy, 2AC Mitchell evidence indicates that empirically governments have used deficit to climb out or recessions and to expand economic growth. Deficit spending is good for the economy. Nugent 3-4-03 executive VP & C.I.O. of PlanMember Advisors, Inc., and principal of Victoria Capital Management, Inc (Thomas E. “The Budget Deficit/The Budget Surplus: The Real Story” http://www.epicoalition.org/docs/budget_deficit_real_story.htm)

Newspapers are filled with warnings about the potential for growing budget deficits due to President Bush’s proposed fiscal stimulus package. Two years ago, we were going to have surpluses as far as the eye could see—somewhere upwards of $2 trillion. Politicians were ebullient over the likelihood that these record surpluses would allow them to save Social Security, increase spending on pet projects, and give well-heeled constituents a nice fat tax cut. Now these same politicians are all stressed out over the forecasts of ballooning federal deficits. The outlook has changed to burdening our children with the bill for our lifestyles and the fact that Social Security will go broke. The government plays a critical role in influencing the economy especially when cyclical factors knock a long-term trend off track. In such circumstances the federal government steps in and replaces some of the lost demand that was coming from the private sector by greater spending. The U.S. dollar is not anchored to any particular commodity; the government is free to net spend (spending in excess of revenues) as much money as necessary to keep the economy afloat. When government “spends,” it introduces demand into the economy. For example, when the government orders a fleet of aircraft, it pays for the aircraft with a check drawn on the U.S. government, and credits the appropriate bank account when that check clears through the Fed. The federal government doesn’t need money to spend money. There is only one way for our government to spend-- it credits an account for a member bank at the Fed. When companies begin producing the planes and hiring the associated workers as a result of the government purchase, income and output goes up. As a matter of accounting, it is the same money the government spends that, at the end of the day, purchases the government bonds that are ultimately issued with the presumption of ‘financing’ the initial government spending. In other words, deficit spending creates the new funds to buy the newly issued securities. The result is an increase in output as well as in increase in savings of net financial assets (in the form of treasury securities) for the private sector. The government deficit has important economic consequences, assuming there was excess capacity in the real economy. Economic activity increases; the government acquires goods and services that are needed; unemployment declines; production goes up; the overall economy grows; and individuals and companies savings increase in the form of the newly issued government bonds.

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1AR Spending Ext 7 – No Impact 2AC Merril Lynch evidence indicates that US economic slow down has had no major impact on other markets around the world. The World economy has already started to shift away from the dollar and have become more reliant on nations besides the US Even if they win that the US economy is key to the global economy – the US economy is extremely resilient Desert News 03 [JENIFER K. NII, 2/21/03, “BENNETT SAYS TAX CUT WILL BOOST ECONOMY,” LEXIS] "The U.S. economy is remarkably resilient. We have had four major shocks to the economy in recent years," he said, citing the effect of overcapacity, the collapse of the stock market after the tech bust, terrorist attacks and corporate governance scandals. "Any one of those four would be sufficient to send the economy into a serious tailspin. But they did not." And The world economy will continue to grow even amid a cooldown of the US economy. The International Herald Tribune 4-12-07 [“Global growth to continue in '07 despite U.S. slowdown, IMF says” Lexis] The world economy will withstand a worse-than-forecast slowdown in the United States and expand at close to 5 percent for a fourth straight year, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday. The fund predicted global growth of 4.9 percent this year, the same as six months ago, following a 5.4 percent expansion in 2006, according to its World Economic Outlook. The IMF forecast a 4.9 percent expansion next year. Europe, Japan and China will help carry the global economy as a housing slump cuts growth in the United States, which accounts for a fifth of world output. While the fallout from a wave of subprime mortgage defaults is likely to be muted, a steeper U.S. downturn is among the risks to global growth, the IMF said. ''So far, the cooling of U.S. activity seems to have had a limited impact beyond its immediate neighbors, Canada and Mexico,'' the report said. ''However, a further cooling of the U.S. economy that increasingly spreads to weakness in consumption and business investment in 2007 would be challenging.'' Other risks include a rebound in oil prices, a resurgence of inflation and rising calls by politicians to increase barriers to commerce to protect domestic industries from overseas competition. ''Overall risks to the outlook seem less threatening than six months ago but remain weighted on the downside, with concerns increasing about financial risks'' that were reflected in recent volatility of global markets, the IMF wrote. Policy makers should take advantage of a period of economic strength to press ahead with more ambitious efforts to tackle ''deep-seated structural challenges,'' the IMF said.

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