An Economic Crisis That Won't Go To Waste

In an interview on Meet the Press, last November, Barack Obama said: "What we need to do is examine: What are the projects where we're going to get the most bang for the buck? How are we going to make sure taxpayers are protected? "You know, the days of just pork coming out of Congress as a strategy, those days are over."

In addition, Obama promised to control spending by pledging to go through the federal budget "page by page, line by line" to eliminate excessive spending and get the economy back on track.

Well, it seems that only days after the Presidential Inauguration, the Presidents pledge to control spending has been forgotten with the passage in the House of Representatives of the economic stimulus bill. The nearly one trillion dollar government spending bill is being touted by President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party as crucial to save and create jobs and to stimulate the ailing economy.

However, the 647-page House legislation is really an appropriations bill passed without debate and loaded with government pork. There's $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn't turned a profit in 40 years. How about $2 billion for child-care subsidies and the $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts?

More than 5 billion dollars spent on global warming research in the last decade is apparently not enough. The stimulus bill spends $400 million more for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects.

There's $650 million in the bill on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons. Congress also wants to spend $600 million more for the federal government to buy new cars. Uncle Sam already spends $3 billion a year on its fleet of 600,000 vehicles.

The Smithsonian is targeted to receive $150 million while community groups like Acorn (which is currently under investigation for voter fraud) can access up to 5 billion dollars of new taxpayer money. The bill is written so that even illegal immigrants can get tax credits.

The truth is that there is really not much job creation in the stimulus bill. Less than 5% of the spending in the bill, is for fixing bridges or other highway projects. There is another $40 billion for broadband and electric grid development, airports and clean water projects. In fact, only about $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus. The problem is that even that stimulus won't help the economy before late 2010.

To understand this stimulus package, taxpayers need to understand the comments of Rahm Emanuel , President Elect Obama’s new chief of staff. In November, Emanuel said; "This crisis is an opportunity to do things that you would not normally be allowed to do. Fiscal, legislative, domestically, etc..... “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

So, this economic crisis is really an opportunity to legislate Democratic initiatives that could not be easily done before. As a result, this economic crisis is not going to go to waste for the new Democratic administration.

Sadly, its business as usual in the nations capital and only the political terminology has changed. Economic stimulus has just become the new name for government pork. Its not too hard to see, all you have to do is read the House stimulus bill line by line.

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