A short sampling being circulated among congressional Republicans includes items from a list compiled by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and from local reporting around the nation. Philadelphia seeks $100 million to redevelop land for a casino. Spirit Mountain, Minn., seeks $6 million for snow-making equipment. A zoo in Rhode Island seeks $4.8 million for a polar bear exhibit and other improvements. Las Vegas, home to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, wants millions for a proposed organized crime museum and a pedestrian walkway to the Tropicana Hotel. Missouri plans to spend the entire $750 million it seeks for transportation on highways, but nothing on mass transit.
These wishes provide Congress with an unparalleled opportunity to pick and choose, a decision process that would lead to the Great Mother of all earmark bills. The Washington Post reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Majority Leader Reid want to have the stimulus bill ready for Barack Obama’s signature on Jan. 20, when he is sworn in as the 44th president.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McCon-nell of Kentucky and House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio want to slow the process down, with good reason. It is not enough to demand that projects be ready to go in order to create employment ”” the only criterion being applied at present. They should also fulfill a clear sense of national priorities.
Casinos. Snow-making equipment. Polar bear habitat. This is “infrastructure?”
Kudos to my state of Missouri on resisting the white elephant of mass transit, BTW. It’s a bottomless hole we throw money into, and we don’t need any more boondoggles that suck tax money right now.
Let me consider the zoo proposal. In October I was in San Antonio for my 50th Trinity University class reunion. Trinity is located a football field away from the San Antonio Zoo. On a weekday afternoon in October (hardly a time for tourists) I revisited that zoo. While I was there I noticed a plaque indicating that the zoo had been constructed as a part of the depression era Works Progress Administration — it is a remant of the effort in the depression to stimulate the economy and to provide jobs for unemployed workers.
Now if the idea of the economic stimulus proposals is to create jobs, then consider this. That afternoon there were hundreds of visitors like me at the zoo. There were employees selling souvenirs and refreshments. There were employees caring for the animals. There were also construction crews updating various pens and building new ones. In other words, that depression era “ear mark” not only created short term jobs during the depression, but is still producing jobs three quarters of a century later.
Doubtless there are some projects on the mayors’ list which ought not to be undertaken. Doubtless there are some projects which are preferable to others on the list and should have priority. Doubtless there are projects which are more atuned to national long term objectives such as energy independence. One might consider that replacing a deteriorating school building with a modern (and typically more efficient) school building is more important than a polar bear exhibit. One might even question whether we ought to be holding polar bears in captivity. My guess is that some of those hundreds of visitors to the San Antonio Zoo in October may have been children on a school science field trip — some of whom may be our biology teachers and scientists of the future.
Your “earmark” might be someone else’s economic development and job generator. Actually what is meant by “earmark” is something added to an appropriation bill at the last minute before passage without scrutiny; one can hope there will be no earmarks in that sense in an economic stimulus package.
Perhaps the world’s biggest earmark was TARP which evidentally turned hundreds of billions of dollars over to financial institutions with no clear idea of how that money was to be used and with no oversight of how that money was actually used.
Ken, the mere fact that Reid and Pelosi want to ramrod this “infrastructure” package through so BO can sign it on 1/20 is reason enough to put the brakes on it. With respect, using your example of the San Antonio Zoo IMHO only illustrates that virtually ANYTHING can be rationalized away as “economic stimulus” or “job creation,” given the right spin-doctoring.
I will agree with you on your characterization of TARP. More and more, I believe that the American people had a bill of goods forced on them by the very “brightest minds in business and finance” that created the house of cards that collapsed this year, and will continue to saddle us and our progeny with massive debt for years–to say nothing of the devaluation of our currency that Bernanke et al. are inflicting on us with their policy of “print enough and they will lend.” As far as I can see, we could throw wheelbarrows of dollars at the credit problem, and still achieve nothing in ameliorating the core problem of lack of trust in toxic assets. Weimar Germany, here we come!!
Any kind of jobs of any sort would be more productive than the last 6 years in Iraq, which generally benefited plenty of questionable mercenary enterprises.
We’ve been getting indebted for the last 8 years for nothing. It would be nice if for the next couple the American people got something in return for the deficit.
Joshua, the criteria for creating jobs is not what kind of jobs they are, but do they create jobs. For the last several decades we’ve decided to create military and prison oriented jobs. Some of us would like to create jobs in other spheres that contribute to the public good and foster some sort of commitment to our great country.
The brightest and the best were just following the deregulatory drug that lots of supply siders were telling them. Unfortunately, they were wrong.
I really do think that “the mere fact that Reid and Pelosi” favor Obama’s stimulus proposal is poor grounds for determining public policy. By that sort of “reasoning” we should have opposed TARP because Bush and Paulson wanted to ramrod that package through, apparently so Paulson could pay off his buddies on Wall Street before the new administration came on board.
I’m also suggesting that just because a zoo may not be the most vital need of the nation or Rhode Island, that doesn’t necessarily mark it as an “earmark” or “pork” or that it has no relevance to the urgent, immediate need to create jobs in order to get the economy back on track. One could, I think, strike the proposal from the list on the grounds that there are higher priorities and/or more effective ways to spend the money. But the blatant partisanship of if Reid and Pelosi are for it, we need to be against it is simply irrational and the sort foolishness that has so polarized the nation for over a quarter of a century now.
I would think that priorities should be given to projects which would promote future energy independence and improve our schools, both of which will have long term benefits for the economy and the nation. We probably also ought to repair our roads and bridges; that might not have quite the long term economic impact of energy and education projects, but it is something that has been dangerously ignored for many years. And, as far as I can tell, these appear to be the priorities of the Democratic leadership in Congress and the incoming administration; and they appear to be sensible to me.
And probably a tax cut for middle class taxpayers and small businesses should be a part of the stimulus package — with the full understanding that when the economy turns around, federal revenues MUST increase even if it means raising taxes, partly to generate surpluses with which to pay off the deficits run up by 8 years of fiscal irresponsibility by the current Republican administration aided by Republican majorities before 2007 in the Congress and to head off an inflationary explosion which the current monetary and fiscal policy will certainly trigger otherwise — not to mention the excessive burden placed on the federal budget by the debt service.
The indications are that the Congress that will convene tomorrow will not write any more blank checks to Treasury, the mayors or anyone else and that Obama will veto any such attempt.
John, as a conservative I respectfully disagree with the notion that the type of job created is of no consequence. We do not need billions of dollars thrown at make-work, short-term, bureaucracy-expanding ventures. I’m not categorically rejecting targeted federal spending on REAL infrastructure needs such as Ken suggests (roads, bridges to somewhere, energy development…). But, I don’t accept the notion that throwing $$$ at every problem we have is a solution. As for your positions on defense-related spending and Iraq, well, I think we could go way off-topic and debate the merits of both forever without reaching consensus, so I’m not going to start.
Ken, if my comment about Reid and Pelosi came off as “blatant partisanship,” let me qualify that by saying that 1) any spending program as potentially huge as this deserves rational debate and scrutiny, not fast-tracking because “something MUST be done;” (I’m one of those who thinks that the way TARP got hustled through Congress is shameful, and have yet to see the benefits of that bit of corporate welfare on a cosmic scale) and 2) as a conservative who grew up in Pelosi’s hometown and watched her rise, I tend to take most anything she and Harry Reid propose with a healthy dose of skepticism and caution. If that’s irrational foolishness to you, then so be it. I’ve indicated elsewhere that I’m not going to be obdurately opposed to anything and everything that Obama and the Dems propose, but I don’t believe in buying a pig in a poke, either. There is a place and need for healthy “partisan” debate on specific proposals and larger policy issues.