One stimulus for sale

Taking the lead from my president, I'm on the verge of utter despair.

Not because I fear for the economy, but because I am becoming more convinced each day that the people trying to right the nation's economic ship have no idea what they're doing or where they're taking us.

The last time I felt this uneasy was in a car mega-dealership in Phoenix.

On a 100 degree-plus day, an army of salesmen in ill-fitting shirts and outdated ties kept up a constant barrage, beseeching me to buy a truck, dealer financing and an extended warranty -- TODAY -- in order to avoid almost certain dire automotive consequences.

I walked out, and lived to drive another day.

Now a president, various congressmen, economists and pundits are telling me that unless we spend an unfathomable amount of our children and grandchildren' s future earnings -- TODAY -- our economy could suffer a catastrophe that rivals the Great Depression.

I don't believe those claims any more than those I heard in the Phoenix showroom. But here's the difference. I don't have the choice to walk away.

The biggest crisis we face today isn't financial. It's intellectual. Before we spend $2 trillion-plus, in the various financial rescue and stimulus packages, surely we can achieve bipartisan consensus on these two basic, common sense questions: How did we get in this mess and what's it going to take to get us out?

Instead, we seem to be throwing money at the wall and hope something sticks. We've got to be smarter than that, particularly given the last high-pressure economic sales job that was rammed down our throats.

Remember back in October when then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said he had to have $700 billion -- TODAY -- to thaw a liquidity freeze that would prevent banks from lending?

Congress haggled but gave Paulson the money in two $350 billion chunks. Paulson wanted to buy up bad assets, primarily mortgages, but changed his mind two weeks later.

Instead, capital would be infused with loans and direct purchases, and the banks would use that money to start making loans again.

That plan didn't work out. Instead of making loans, the banks simply kept the money (primarily to improve their balance sheets). Last week, the chairman of the bailout oversight committee told Congress the Treasury paid $78 billion more for the securities they bought than what they were worth.

In other words, the banks suckered Paulson and Congress.

Don't get me wrong. This wasn't a master scam, but simply the expensive consequence of not thinking things through.

Yet, here we are a few months later about to do the same darn thing with the $800-plus billion economic stimulus bill. I have yet to hear or read an explanation of just what's in this bill that will help the economy, other than the claim of "jobs-jobs-jobs."

OK, fine, how many jobs will this bill create?

No one knows. About the only thing that's conclusively known about the stimulus is that it will be "a massive financial windfall for agencies across the federal government," according to Washington Post writers Steve Vogel and Ed O'Keefe.

So as far as economic sectors go, the rich will get richer under this bill. Unemployment among government workers is a measly 3 percent. Education and health workers are busy too. The unemployment rate in those sectors is only 3.8 percent. Keep these numbers in mind next week when our elected leaders come home to rave about the much-needed jobs the stimulus created in health care and in the schools.

If President Barack Obama wants to get Americans back to work, he would veto the stimulus and demand Congress send him an infrastructure-only bill -- TODAY.

Goodness knows the nation needs it. Unemployment among construction workers is at 18.2 percent even though there is plenty for them to do. The American Society of Civil Engineers has identified $2.2 trillion of badly needed repairs and upgrades to our nation's roads, bridges, levees and airports. The ripple effect of spending big money on infrastructure would not only kick the economy into high gear, but you and I would be much safer.

Yet infrastructure makes up a fraction of this stimulus.

Seems our leaders are determined to take this economy nowhere -- TODAY -- and to do it without a bridge.


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