91% Prefer TCOT Tax Relief Proposal to Stimulus Bill

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) February 13, 2009 -- Michael Patrick Leahy, co-founder of Top Conservatives on Twitter, the rapidly growing movement of online conservatives, this morning announced the results of last night's #TCOT Plan Nationwide House Party and Focus Group.

"It's Friday the 13th today. The results are in, and it's a nightmare for the Democrat members of Congress who are on their way to bringing European Socialism to the United States.

"Conservatives across the country are clear: After comparing the #TCOT Plan of cutting income taxes in half for all of 2009, to the wasteful and bloated PORKULUS bill that no one has actually yet read, 91% of our respondents concluded that the #TCOT Plan would do a great deal to improve the economy and that the so called "Stimulus" bill would do very little."

Leahy went on to describe how the Nationwide #TCOT Plan House Party was conducted.

"It was truly a new media exercise. You could say that conservatives are now taking the grassroots concepts of Barack Obama, and we're beating him at his own game. The Democrats won't be conducting their own 'House Parties' until next week, I understand. We conservatives already held ours across the country, when it really mattered--before today's PORKULUS bill vote in Congress."

House Parties were conducted in private residences and restaurants around the country, from California to Texas to Nebraska to Massachussets. In addition, House Party participants could join on using the #halftax hashtag on Twitter, and over a phone conference call.

"We asked everyone who participated to do two simple things:

(1) Calculate how much extra cash they would have if their income taxes were cut in half and tell us how they would spend the extra money.

(2) Tell us how they would personally benefit from the Democrat 'Stimulus' Bill.

"The #TCOT Plan results were easy to calculate. The average 2009 extra cash in pocket was $6,825. That ranged from about $500 that a college student anticipated in returns to a little over $20,000 that a small business owner expected."

"The most significant finding was how people would spend this extra money."

The survey showed the following expenditures:

52% would spend money on home repairs
39% would purchase other consumer goods

28% would pay down credit card debt

28% would purchase a new or used car

17% would spend money on car repairs

Leahy commented that "the enlightening thing about these responses is how truly stimulative this #TCOT Plan tax cut would be.

Quantifying the results of the Democrat PORKULUS plan was another matter entirely.

"Part of the problem was that no one could really figure out what actually was in the plan, and how it would benefit them. We provided respondents with the latest public information that was available, but the actual expenditures were about as clear as mud. For instance, we used a nice Washington Post graphic from the House version of the bill, the one that showed that only $109 billion of the $819 billion in that bill would be spent in 2009. So we tried to look at that $109 billion spent in 2009 to see where it would go, but it didn't really seem to benefit anyone who responded. A lot of it went to the states to bail out their overspending."

"It turns out that the biggest open question of the evening on the PORKULUS bill was this:

A lot of people wanted to know how much of the PORKULUS bill would be used to pay the California medical bills of the unemployed octuplet mom who already had six children.

It sounds crazy on the face of it, but as you look at it, a lot of people concluded that there would be no benefit to them, but probably a significant benefit to the octuplet mom"

Senator Charles Schumer of New York was another big loser.

"97% of our respondents felt that Schumer was wrong in saying that the American people didn't care about the details of the pork in the Stimulus Bill," Leahy added.

A total of 67 responses were used in the survey. 90% self classified as Conservative, 4% as Moderate, 4% as Other, and 2% as Liberal.

More information can be found online at http://topconservativesontwitter.org

congress     stimulus     Stimulus Bill     tax relief     TCOT     top conservatives     twitter