Ah, the terrible urgency of now.
The “stimulus” bill nowness, which was very strongly oversold to us in the terrible urgency of some TV cameras, andthe introspective caution of our new-now, invites our remembering of all Obama’s stimulating claims.
The argument went that Only The Government could possibly save us because Only The Government is Right Here and Right Now and Enough For You. That’s been the standard liberal line since the world’s oldest profession was first nationalized, and it hasn’t changed. Just dive through Las Vegas.
But more particularly, collapse could only be avoided if the vaunted government, the one which was now moral because Obama was in charge of it, spent tons and tons of your money that neither you nor it possessed.
So they hot-rod Blagojeviched this bill through the legislatures, pausing only to wheeze at which of their friends were going to get kickbacks (a billion for Acorn anyone?), and told the TV cameras that it didn’t matter so much what we were spending on, it just mattered that we were spending it.
The theory which all liberals took for granted, and all cowed conservatives did not even groan at, was that no other physical mechanism existed to pump that huge amount of money into the economy fast enough.
In order to backstop the wealth that oil shocks and bundled bad loans dropped out the bottom, we needed Barry to ride barely to the rescue. On his culturally sensitive camel, Obama would come flinging bags of bullion to the poor.
The camel got in the tent, but it left bull behind it.
It turns out that the government, much like conservatives have always said, can’t do anything right.
And in this case, it can’t do anything fast.
Rutledge Capital states that just $24.6 billion of the $787 billion “stimulus” bill had been actually spent through the end of May. Rutledge continues that, “only 11% of the $308 billion appropriated to discretionary spending like highways, mass transit, energy and education will be spent by the end of this year. Overall, less than a quarter of total funds will be spent in 2009.”
Now compare that with the alternate plan. Congress could easily have passed a bill that suspended the payroll tax for three months. Total tax revenue is something like $2.9 trillion a year. Three months worth is about $725 billion.
There isn’t a business in America that would have waited a week after the President signed the bill to quit withholding payroll taxes. We could have guaranteed hundreds of billions of dollars plugged right into the economy at its root – careful transactions – and the full effect of “stimulus” could have been realized by now. Everybody could have run out and bought an electric pickle immediately, and we would not have had to suffer this interminable delay.
Instead, trusting the superlative and essential nature of Obama, we have about thirty billion spent on meaningless piffle, and the hope that maybe eighty billion might be spent by years’ end.
If the rhetoric was to be believed, that the GDP required the terrible urgency of now, then what we have here is known as a garden variety failure.
Looks like we alone, the payroll tax payers, are still the ones we’ve been waiting for.
