'Stimulus' Nonsense

Arthur Laffer in the Wall Street Journal on the Stimulus Nonsense of robbing Peter to pay Paul:

All of the stimulative effects of the rebate to the recipients will be 100% offset by the destimulative effects of the increase in liabilities of the workers and producers who have to pay for the transfer of resources to the rebate recipients. There is no stimulus from a rebate, period.

John Stossel on TownHall.com on Stimulating Nonsense:

The federal government is in the red. Bush's new budget has a $400 billion deficit. There's no lockbox with $100 billion in it [and no leprechauns with pots of gold]. So to give everyone a tax rebate, the government will have to borrow more money. But that only moves the cash from one part of the economy to another. As Roberts says, "It's like taking a bucket of water from the deep end of a pool and dumping it into the shallow end."