If Obama intends to go cold turkey on partisan politics, he has an odd way of showing it. Last week’s announcement of an $819 billion “stimulus package” was a cold dose of reality for Obama-maniacs who hoped he’d govern from the center and smooth over the rough edges in Washington.
I know the adage, “desperate times call for desperate measures,” but nobody is this desperate. This bill reeks of excess and bad policy, and anyone who cares about the future should take a stand against it.
Leave it to Democrats to take advantage of a crisis. Like FDR before them, Democrats, with Obama’s support, are feeding loaves and fishes to the masses in a time of economic contraction, shamelessly trying to curry favor with every constituency and interest group they can imagine. This time, they’re peddling nearly a trillion dollars worth of reckless spending projects (which amounts to well over a trillion dollars with interest).
The long-term impact of the bill will make you queasy. But before we focus on that, we should examine its immediate effects. President Obama is touting the bill as “emergency” relief. That seems hyperbolic, if not dishonest. According to the Congressional Budget Office, only 20 percent of the funds will be spent this year, and only 64 percent will be spent in the next 19 months. That hardly seems like urgency.
Indeed, a more apt term to describe the package is “wish fulfillment.” Finding themselves suddenly in power, the Democrats are making up for all the time that was lost to them in the past eight years. So, to exact revenge and gloat in their newfound power, they create a bill that fulfills all their hopes and dreams for welfare, and inelegantly call it a “stimulus.” And the American people are stuck footing the huge bill.
With such a huge price tag, people should know what they’re paying for. This bill is laden with pork, which should not be part of any bill let alone a stimulus. There’s $400 million for global warming research, $4 billion for ACORN (a political organization that’s been charged with fraud), $1 billion for Amtrak, $2.4 billion to study carbon emissions, and $335 million for STI education. And that’s just a sampling of the weird and wild things that are being pushed in the magical and endearing name of “stimulus.” Of course, they won’t have that effect.
The shear volume of the bill is unsettling. The numbers are hard to wrap your mind around: $125 billion for public education, $27 billion for unemployment benefits, $87 billion for Medicaid, etc. I’m all for making improvements, but there’s a definite danger in throwing huge amounts of money in every direction at once.
The $275 billion in “tax relief” looks good, but ultimately won’t help much. What politicians are not telling you is that “tax relief,” for the most part, is further relief for people who already pay nothing. It will likely increase the number of people with almost no liability from a third of the population to a half. That’s not exactly stimulating.
Other components are more moderate, but still miss the mark, The $30 billion that’s devoted to infrastructure, for instance, is misguided. I would jump at improving our highways (people in Westwood can certainly empathize), but these projects are notoriously as slow as molasses. It can take years to navigate through the bureaucratic labyrinth to the point when you can actually start building. As a result, relief will come far too late.
Faced with an uproar of criticism, President Obama has said that “modest differences” in the bill should not stand in the way of “swift action.” Ridiculous. He and the Democrats should cut the bipartisan shtick and fess up to what’s really going on. They’re taking out their pent-up frustrations (which have been building for the past eight years) directly on the American people, and they’re using our money to do it.
If this stimulus passes without considerable changes to improve it ““ and that means significant tax cuts (especially on the payroll tax) ““ we’re in for a bleak future. In a few years, consumer confidence will be restored, but the huge infusion of capital from the stimulus in conjunction with Bush’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, will lead to massive inflation on par with the Carter years. At the same time, it would put our deficit at astonishing post-WWII levels.
Democrats could have made a big score by proposing a truly equitable, bipartisan bill that would set the tone for a new era. Instead, they decided to exploit a crisis out of pure greed, and ended up without a single Republican vote.
If the Democrats choose to tread this slippery slope, they may end up out of power in four years, and then they will have to find a new messiah audacious enough to promise “hope” and “change.” If they know what’s good for them, they will shape up, or else go home.
E-mail Pherson at apherson@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.