This Is Not a Stimulus Bill

And Democrats Are Ramming All 1,073 Pages Down Our Throats

February 13, 2009

Michel van der Hoek

Socialism has arrived. Congress will vote on its official introduction into the United States this week or early next week. Unless Senate Republicans filibuster the so-called “Stimulus Bill” or use any other opportunity to stall its final passage, President Obama will be able to sign more than $1 trillion away that will never be recovered. Congress is throwing away tax money and inflicting enormous damage to the economy on top of it.

The Stimulus Bill is not one. It is, in fact, a huge spending package that will achieve two ends: it will please liberal lobbyists because they are being rewarded with millions in no-strings-attached give-aways, and it will be a transformational spending program. That is right, when Nancy Pelosi speaks of this bill as “transformational” she is telling the truth, because this bill is historic. Forget the accusations of George W. Bush as a big spending conservative squandering the small-government conservative agenda. This bill will nationalize enormous parts of the economy and increase the federal government’s involvement to extents never before seen.

The litany of problems with the 2009 Spending Package seems endless. The bill contains many projects that are in themselves innocuous, such as $200 million in medical research subsidies. Who can complain about medical research—unless it’s funding for the obsolete research in embryonic stem cells? There is nothing wrong with spending money on such projects except they have no place in a bill that is being packaged and sold as a specific antidote for the current economic depression. Medical research subsidies will create virtually no new jobs, since most of the money would be spent on equipment. Take it out of the bill and present it at the appropriate time.

But it is not just that there are valid projects in the wrong bill. The Spending Package also contains blatant payoffs for political friends and enormous waste on useless federal projects, even after the congressional conference. You read it: the bill is stuffed with old-fashioned pork. ACORN is getting $1 billion dollars for “Community Development,” probably with a hand-signed thank-you card from Pres. Obama himself for their help in getting him elected. And why are Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid spending $50 million on an arts endowment?

The way in which this bill is being rammed down our throats is breathtaking, almost literally. Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) put up a helpful video illustrating how much paper Congress is expected to digest in less than 24 hours. This, by the way, is also a barefaced violation of Obama’s promise to foster an atmosphere of transparency and Democrat’s pledge to post any bill online 48 hours before a vote. Nah, this is just an old-fashioned midnight bill with bacon grease oozing from almost every one of its 1,073 pages.

The Congressional Budget Office has calculated that this bill will do nothing to stimulate the economy because, in its estimate, too little of it will actually be spent in the immediate short-term of this crisis. Much of the money—too much—will sit around while federal bureaucrats review applications from possible recipients.

Under the scenario of the current bill, it would be better to do absolute nothing and just let the free market ride it out. I do not advocate this. There are too many toxic factors at work in the economy to let it rage uncontrolled. Government does have a role, albeit a limited one, to contain the worst excesses of a market driven by profit only. There is nothing scary about careful incentives to promote consumer and business confidence. Nor do I believe, as some argue—seriously or in their attempts to beard conservatives—that tax cuts alone will take care of the problems, though I do not see how letting the Bush tax cuts expire or raising taxes on certain consumer goods such as cars is going to stimulate consumer spending.

Yet this is what Democrats are doing. With three Republican defectors in the Senate—Susan Collins (ME), Olympia Snow (ME), and Arlen Specter (PA)—the Spending Package is filibuster-proof. By next week, Pres. Obama will sign it into law, assuring just like his predecessor FDR that what could have been a short recession will turn into a full-blown, long-term Depression. This bill will near-bankrupt the country and force higher tax rates in the long term to accommodate the inflated government spending, while it will do nothing to create jobs and improve credit-flow in the banking system. More banks and more companies will go belly-up or have to seriously downsize their work force. Obama will have to make sure foodstamps programs are well-funded in this bill, because we are going to need them.

Of course, we are saving enormous amounts of money by closing Guantánamo Bay and, as Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) has said, by scrapping expensive weapons systems. And a good chunk of the jobless problem can be solved by his proposal to finally draft gays into the military.