The Economy: Looking for Grownups in Congress

by Matt Gauntt

This week, Congress was formulating a stimulus bill to get the economy moving in the right direction.  The House of Representatives passed an $819 billion bill on Wednesday and the Senate is poised to pass a similar bill this coming week.

The Country and the World are facing potentially, the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression.  We were told that this was a time to end partisanship, to end the culture of greed and corruption in the nation.  We were told that we needed to end the influence of lobbyists and special interest.

The actions that Congress are taking this week will have profound impacts on the future of our country.  This is a time for leadership and more importantly statesmanship.

$819 BILLION DOLLARS!!!!!!!  This is not just a couple million dollars for some campaign donor.  This is really serious money.  In the movie "Zoolander", Will Farrell's character, Mugatu, passionately screamed "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!".  I feel the same way thinking about this stimulus bill.

Put aside the discussion about whether or not big government spending (Keynesian economics) will solve a recession for a moment.  Even if it did, this is a porkfest feeding trough of all the wrong things, including:

• Billions for various broadband programs focused mainly in rural areas.  Isn't this what Verizon, Sprint and AT&T are supposed to do?  But if the lobbyists for these companies can just get the government to pay for these expansions for them, well, all the better I guess.  (so much for that end to lobbyists ruling Washington).  Besides, there is not a place in the entire country where you can't get broadband from a simple satellite dish.
• Another $650 million so people can convert from analog to digital TV.  The ONLY people that need these converters are people that use a set of 'rabbit ears" or the old style antennas (the ones that look like overgrown clothes lines).  At $40 a piece for the converters, that is 16 million TV's.  Are there REALLY that many TV's that use rabbit ears?
• $2.4 billion for a carbon capture and sequestration technology program.  (Translation:  take carbon dioxide produced by coal and other fossil fuels and send it back down into the ground - ya know, save the planet from that mean, evil, wicked carbon dioxide.)
• $50 million for the National Endowment of the Arts
• About $400 million for climate modeling
• $175 million to purchase and restore floodplains
• $600 million for electric and "alternative fuel" cars to be used in government agencies.  Never mind that these cars cost more money to purchase and require millions more in infrastructure to use.

  There are programs for just about EVERYONE in this lard-fest.  Many of them might be (big emphasis on the "might" part) honorable programs that will help people, such as the purchasing of floodplains.  However, are they "needs"?

  A couple of years ago, my wife and I had an argument (only 1 of 2 that we have ever had in 18 years of marriage - really), about needs and wants.  I "wanted" a big-screen TV.  She asked if we "needed" it. Congress needs to be asking the same question that my wife asked me about all of these programs.  This is a time in our country where we only should be looking at the needs, not the wants.

  Perhaps most troubling are provisions that would require that only American only steel be used in infrastructure projects.  While on its surface, this might sound like a good thing, the problem is that it is reminiscent of the Smoot-Hawley Act that essentially drove the great depression because it set off a trade war internationally.  See this article on Hot Air.com.

  It reminds me of the speech at the end of the movie "American President".  (Skip to about the 4:40 mark in the video.)  This IS a serious time, and we need SERIOUS people at the helm.  Nancy Pelosiand those that went with her on this pork fest, like my own Congressman Bill Foster, should be ashamed. If you can't be a grownup, please get out of the way and let some grownups take over.