As we have said, to the extent that the $700 billion TARP represents investments in banks that will be redeemed in the future, it should not be considered normal government spending: in accounting terms, investment and spending are two different things. But the $819 billion so-called “stimulus bill” is for the most part pure spending, throwing dollars down a rathole on an unimaginable scale, and arguably pushing the US down a path towards eurosclerosis. Ben Stein:

Eight hours of debate in the House of Representatives to pass a bill spending $820 billion — or roughly $102 billion per hour of debate. Only 10 percent of the “stimulus” to be spent on 2009. Close to half goes to entities that sponsor or employ (or both) members of the Service Employees International Union, federal, state, and municipal employee unions or other Democrat-controlled unions.

This bill is sent to Congress after President Obama has been in office for seven days. It is 680 pages long. According to my calculations, not one member of Congress read the entire bill before this vote. Obviously, it would have been impossible, given his schedule, for the president to have read the whole thing.

For the amount spent, we could have given every unemployed person in the United States roughly $75,000. We could give every person who had lost a job and is now passing through long-term unemployment of six months or longer roughly $300,000. There has been pork-barrel politics since there has been politics, but the scale of this pork is beyond what had ever been imagined before — and no one can be sure it will actually do much stimulation.

So where is the government going to be frugal? Here: “the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee is preparing to trim military spending on weapons, committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin said Jan. 30.” The savings target is perhaps in excess of 10% of military spending, or around $55 billion. It would appear that we now know, rather definitively, the direction of the Obama administration. You can’t say you weren’t warned. This is exactly what the candidate promised. We know now that he meant what he said, and it’s not good news.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 1st, 2009 at 6:09 am and is filed under business, Democrats, General, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.