On Feb 11, 7:41*pm, wrote:
On Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:29:44 -0800 (PST), wrote:
On Feb 11, 12:01*pm, HK wrote:
Stimulus would let Caterpillar rehire workers: Obama
Wed Feb 11, 2009 12:43pm EST

SPRINGFIELD, Va., Feb 11 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on
Wednesday that Caterpillar Inc's (CAT.N) chief executive has said he
would be able to rehire some of the company's 20,000 laid-off workers if
Congress passes an $800 billion economic stimulus plan.

Speaking at the site of a highway construction project in Virginia,
Obama noted that the heavy equipment machinery giant had announced some
20,000 layoffs in the past few weeks as a result of the global economic
crisis.

"Today, the chairman and CEO of Caterpillar said that if the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Plan passes, his company would be able to
rehire some of those employees," said Obama. The president is scheduled
to visit a Caterpillar plant in East Peoria, Illinois, on Thursday.

To do what? *Build heavy equipment that no one is buying?

Are you really that simple? A big piece of the plan is INFRASTRUCTURE.
That means fixing and building bridges, roads and other big stuff that
will require heavy equipment.

Speaking of simple, the latest figure I've heard pegs the spending
you're speaking of at 3% of the total package. Only 3%. Not big.
The rest is pork.

While we're speaking of simple, you do realize we're not talking about
the entire package in this thread, but just of this one thing
concerning Cat, right? And how, if they use the money to re-hire
workers they don't need because no one is buying their products, that
it makes no sense? It's a smoke screen for pork.

In the end, this is just a "news" story that's setting up a talking
point about how the package is providing jobs. But the reality is
that it's just passing money through a big corporation to the layed-
off employees. Done directly, that's called unemployment benefits,
isn't it?