Spending Bill - Part Two

Lost in the marketing campaign for the Stimulus Bill was a TV ad trumpeting how Harry Reid will get Nevada’s “fair share,” In my experience saying “I’ll pay my fair share” means you won’t. “I want my fair share” means you want more than your fair share. This makes the term vague and meaningless and therefore one of the most irritating in the language. It fits quite well in an ad by the most grating man in the Senate.

The Stimulus Bill includes money for infrastructure such as a high-speed rail from L.A. to Las Vegas which will surely have Sen. Reid’s name on it. It also includes money for ACORN’s bogus campaign registration efforts, money for the former Big Three automakers and a Mob Museum in Las Vegas. Yes, Harry Reid will get Nevada’s fair share thanks to the suckers in the rest of the nation who don’t have a Senate Leader.

We could pick apart the Stimulus Bill line by line but that would take years. No one’s read the thing and I don’t plan to be the first so we’ll look at the big picture. People pay through the nose to the federal government then hope that the elected help can keep out of prison long enough to get more back than they paid in. This is government today. We want government jobs, welfare, retirement, health care, roads, parks and big buildings all on the government dime and we want more than the neighboring state gets. Cutting out the middleman and letting us keep our own tax dollars doesn’t occur to us.

Deficit spending has been tried since the dawn of civilization and has never worked. When Rome was broke Caligula had a novel enterprise for raising funds by opening a brothel with the Senators’ wives employed as prostitutes. I would applaud something similar in Washington but please don’t put Barney Frank in charge. FDR spent wildly but saw manufacturing and unemployment at their worst four years after the New Deal started. Japan’s Lost Decade of the 1990’s saw a stagnant nation because of government intrusion.

If government involvement in the economy were effective we’d all be speaking Russian right now. Or German, North Korean or Cuban. We have the greatest nation and economic engine the world has ever seen and we’re shoveling sand in the gears.

The news reports usually feature anyone from President Obama to some wretched person on the street saying that we have to do something and do it now. But sometimes doing something is much worse than doing nothing. If I dig a hole in the yard today and fill it in tomorrow it would be doing something but don’t confuse it with progress, especially if I hit a gas line. Throwing borrowed money at make-work boondoggles is not the recipe to fix an economy but just the opposite.

The bonds that will finance this bill will be sold to investors in countries such as China until they’re unwilling or unable to buy them anymore. Instead of cancelling the spending we’ll just print money which will lead to hyperinflation. This bill will ensure each of us will get our fair share of economic pain.

Spending Bill

Last year I saw a very interesting documentary about impending fiscal doom called I.O.U.S.A by David Walker, formerly Comptroller General and head of the General Accounting Office. The message was quite simple and uplifting: “We’re financially screwed.”

The nation’s largest short term problem is the financial crisis, except if you get blown up anytime soon. There is a huge budget deficit that gets piled on top of our national debt every year. This is being financed by selling bonds, mostly overseas, which will probably be paid back with cheap inflation-racked dollars.

Walker walks us through the history of deficits of this country which were built up in times of crisis and war and quickly paid back. Until now. The current debt problem isn't resulting from The Vietnam War, Reagan’s military spending, nor our excursions in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a problem of “mandatory” spending which, unfortunately the military isn’t a part.

The FDR Administration saw the birth of government programs designed to finance your retirement and pay your medical bills. The amount spent per recipient and who the recipients are off-limits to the President’s veto pen as these laws are already on the books. “Reforming Social Security” has become political fighting words rather than igniting a serious talk about the root of the financial mess we’re in or whether the government should be paying for geezers’ golf lifestyles in Florida.

This supposedly compassionate “cradle to grave” nanny care is breaking us and we’re too busy playing Guitar Hero to notice. We see undigestable brain-numbing numbers like our $400 Billion annual deficit but fail to see that we have unfunded liabilities of $53 Trillion. That’s right, our national debt plus our retirements, doctor bills and general welfare will cost each of us – I don’t know because my calculator won’t run numbers that high.

In his campaign President Obama berated President Bush’s deficit spending as if Bush invented fiscal irresponsibility, yet signed a spending bill of $787 Billion with every nickel borrowed. In a not-so-rare moment of pretzel logic from John Kerry on the Senate floor speaking in favor of the bill essentially said, “Where were the Republicans the past eight years while we ran up these huge deficits in the first place?” The solution to a financial mess created by drunken spending must be to blow a boatload more.

The Walker documentary wasn’t exactly a blockbuster. On the opening weekend the wakeup call drew only me and four others to the theater.