Unreal Stimulus

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, February 04, 2009 4:20
PM PT

Stimulus: Since the president seems to be in a mood to admit his
mistakes, we humbly offer one more for him to acknowledge: His effort to
ram most of his spending agenda into a must-do economic stimulus bill is
failing.

His effort is failing. He can't even get his own party to sign on to the
plan. So far, at least, Obama doesn't appear willing to recognize this.
In a CNN interview on Tuesday, Obama was asked what was nonnegotiable in
the stimulus bill. His answer, in short, was pretty much everything.

On his list of nonnegotiables: Infrastructure, weatherizing homes,
health IT spending, and education spending, investments in science and
technology research, health insurance for the unemployed, relief to
states, and aid to families.

That's basically what the House passed last week with zero Republican
support, and what the Senate admitted this week that it can't pass --
despite being one vote shy of a filibuster-proof Democratic
supermajority and despite the repeated and public urgings of a very
popular new president.

"I think, in fairness to the House Democrats . . . if you tally up all
of the programs that have been criticized . . . that amounts to less
than 1% of the total package," Obama said.

But clearly, the concerns aren't about a tiny amount of waste in an
otherwise good bill. If that were the case, the fix would be simple.

The fact is it's Obama's effort to get much of his domestic agenda
enacted under the guise of stimulus that has lawmakers -- on both sides --
increasingly agitated.

And make no mistake, a significant portion of the stimulus spending
comes right out of the agenda Obama announced last summer -- long before
the need for a massive stimulus bill emerged.

Take the home weatherization program. On CNN Obama argued that this $6
billion program was nonnegotiable because: "First of all, you can employ
people weatherizing those homes."

But Obama announced plans to weatherize a million homes a year last
summer. Except back then it was touted as part of a plan to create a
"clean energy future" -- not as a jobs program.

How about investment in health information technology? In his Blueprint
for Change, issued in August, Obama vowed to "Make an upfront investment
of $50 billion in electronic health information technology systems to
reduce errors, and save lives and money."

So why is this now a nonnegotiable part of a stimulus package?

Ditto the $1 billion in "Comparative Effectiveness Research" in the
stimulus bill. Last year, Obama called that "a comprehensive effort to
tackle health care disparities" to cut health care costs.

Transportation spending, education spending, money for science and
technology -- all were also key parts of Obama's Blueprint.

To be fair, Obama admits he's trying to marry short-term stimulus
spending with, as he put it, investments that "lay the groundwork for
long-term economic growth."

But it's a marriage that shouldn't be saved.

As former Clinton budget chief Alice Rivlin noted, the proper government
response in a recession is to "act quickly to mitigate the downslide
with spending increases and revenue cuts that will stimulate consumer
and investor spending, create jobs and protect the most vulnerable from
the ravages of recession."

She added that "the anti-recession package should be distinguished from
longer-run investments needed to enhance the future growth and
productivity of the economy. . . . Such a long-term investment program
should not be put together hastily and lumped in with the anti-recession
package."

President Obama has said many times that he's open to good ideas from
Republicans. So why isn't he listening to the sound advice of a
prominent expert from his own party?


http://tinyurl.com/bgbv6p

And for a bonus:

From today's Patriot Post Chronicle...

Unbelievable: "Every month that we do not have an economic recovery
package, 500 million Americans lose their jobs. I don't think we can go
fast enough." --Nancy Pelosi

Imagine... that woman is two heart beats away from the Oval Office.

Ed

-- 
"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is
to fill the world with fools." --Herbert Spencer

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt."
--Thomas Jefferson

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