While these programs support campaign promises made by Mr. Obama, they do nothing to lift the nation out of its current doldrums.
The bill’s rushed decision to spend $9 billion for rural Internet service, for example, needs to be jettisoned. So do many other projects that have nothing to do with job recovery, such as $400 million to research sexually transmitted diseases.
Meanwhile, the stimulus side of the bill will not do the job that America needs it to do. Mr. Obama’s economic advisers say it will eventually create 3 to 4 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office puts its job-creation range lower, between 1.2 and 3.6 million jobs. But the nation lost nearly two million jobs in the last quarter of 2008 and is forecast to lose another four million jobs by the end of 2010 if there is no economic stimulus. That points to the need for a more effective stimulus plan for 2009 and 2010.
“Fix,” in the sense one “fixes” one’s cat.
The best way to ‘fix’ this abomination is to kill it dead, burn the body and start fresh. There almost no stimulation to be found in it. It is plain and simple political pornography.
Heh – lots of people objected to rural electrification as well (creeping socialism). I also wonder if we’d be enjoying this blog if the government hadn’t invested in, say, computer technology. And why shouldn’t the government research disease?
John [#3]: Government can appropriately provide financial support for basic research, universal literacy, public health, and similar public benefits that the private sector may not adequately provide. These activities (like police protection and national defense) involve what economists call “public goods”: benefits we all get to enjoy whether or not we pay for them. We can’t realistically charge people individual “user fees” for suppressing cholera, bubonic plague, and terrorism.
In my view, government should also offer people a hand up to escape destitution (e.g., through job training and placement). Doing so affirms human dignity and ultimately benefits us all.
But we need to take care lest properly targeted assistance become a political pork barrel or a set of entrenched, Peronist-style subsidies (like the billions of dollars we spend annually [url=subsidizing the production of cotton]subsidizing the production of cotton[/url] and other goods that the private sector is perfectly able to provide on its own).
In normal times the government should balance its budget and play only a limited role in the economy. A Peronist-style network of subsidies is compatible with neither of those goals and inevitably helps promote crony capitalism and just plain cronyism.
John, the hitch with this legislation is that while it is billed as stimulus and being flogged hard using the language of fear only around 10% of the funds being asked for are scored by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office as being stimulative. The rest may be needed for good and worthy purposes, but cannot be justified on the basis of economic emergency. The elements of the legislation that will not provide immediate economic stimulus must compete for funding in the normal budgetary process. If this legislation is allowed to pass without very serious changes taking out the pork, earmarks, padding and fluff we will add even more unwarranted debt and inflation to the load our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are already signed up to bear.