Stimulating Pork

I've been watching the negotiations over Obama's stimulus bill in the House and Senate with interest. At a political level, I wanted to see how far the dempublicans were going to over reach and how convinced the repulicrats were going to stick to the theory that they haven't been fiscally conservative enough, hence their election defeats. So far, I have not been disappointed.

The repulicrats have an answer for everything having to do with the economy--tax cuts. Hunh? Remember that $600 check that W sent all those people? Well, it didn't do much for the economy because people are BROKE. They paid bills and stuck it in the bank, which is generally a good thing, but it's not an economic stimulus.

The dempublicans clearly see the bill as the answer to all of their constituents' problems. For instance:

$650 million for digital-TV coupons; $90 million to educate “vulnerable populations”
$15 billion for boosting Pell Grant college scholarships
$300 million for grants to combat violence against women
$150 million for agricultural-commodity purchases
$150 million for “producers of livestock, honeybees, and farm-raised fish”
$850 million for Amtrak
$300 million for energy-efficient-appliance rebate programs

We can have a separate discussion as to whether Congress should be funding any of those at all, but they sure as shit aren't economic stimuli. The dems see the big gravy train approaching and don't want to miss it.

The problem with all of this non-stimulus stuff is that, eventually, we pay twice as much for these programs due to the interest on the borrowed money taken out to fund them. Plus it allows foreign banks to have us by the short and curlies.

It's private industry, not government spending, that's going to lead us out of this recession. Obama may be right that 'green' industries will be the key. He proposes several measures to prop up the industry. The problems with this are that it hides the true cost of green energy, once an industry has a subsidy it almost never gives it up, and it puts the government in the position of picking winners/losers and it has a poor record of doing so.

If Obama wants to give green industries a boost, he should repeal tax breaks to the oil industry for exploration, etc. This will lead to carbon-based energy being priced more closely to its cost (in this case, higher) and make green energy more cost competitive while bringing money INTO the treasury. It will also force the green energy companies to put up or shut up by getting rid of one the barriers to their success. If they succeed, and I think they will, they'll organically create jobs without the government's help. What a concept.