I'll give you something to stimulate.....in my pants!

Our country is not in good shape. We need lots of help on many levels. So the Obama Admin is pushing forward a stimulus package. This sounds like a great idea. It is exactly what we need.

I decided to do something novel. I decided to actually read whatever copy of the Stimulus Package I could get my hands on. I had to do several searches before I could read the actual plan that our lawmakers are debating through the news media. I'll be honest, from my impressions from the media accounts, I was pretty down on it. That was how I started this post, was to rag on the damn Democrats for screwing up a good thing. Here is what is as close as I can find to what the House passed,

http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/PressSummary01-15-09.pdf

Some of the projects that Republicans have condemned as being pork seem to have more value, upon further inspection. For example, I saw on Fox News they were criticizing there being something related to Clean Water in the plan. Here is what the plan says:

Clean Water
Clean Water State Revolving Fund: $6 billion for loans to help communities upgrade wastewater treatment systems. EPA estimates a $388 billion funding gap. The Association of State and Interstate Water Pollution Control Administrators found that 26 states have $10 billion in approved water projects.
Drinking Water State Revolving Fund: $2 billion for loans for drinking water infrastructure. EPA estimates there is a $274 billion funding gap. The National Governors Association reported that there are $6 billion in ready-to-go projects, which could quickly be obligated.
Rural Water and Waste Disposal: $1.5 billion to support $3.8 billion in grants and loans to help communities fund drinking water and wastewater treatment systems. In 2008, there were $2.4 billion in requests for water and waste loans and $990 million for water and waste grants went unfunded.

So I guess nobody is going to get paid to upgrade wastewater treatment plants. No one stands to gain financially by making sure water can get to the American people. There are no engineers who need to bring home a paycheck? There are no construction workers who need to work on building or improving these facilities? No, nevermind, what was I thinking. If we're not talking about tax cuts it really isn't a stimulus plan.

Another segment talks about replacing the federal fleet of vehicles:

GSA Federal Fleet: $600 million to replace older vehicles owned by the federal government with alternative fuel automobiles that will save on fuel costs and reduce carbon emissions.

This has been criticized as well by Republicans and pundits. Because you know, we aren't in the process of propping up the auto industry. Those people don't need jobs. Why would we want to help our investment succeed, by rewarding those companies that offer alternative fuels/fuel efficient options. Those assembly-line workers didn't really need their jobs. They don't have families to feed. The car companies don't need any pushing to make more fuel efficient/alternative fuel vehicles right? Because American car makers have been at the forefront of this thought for the past 20 years?! Government deals like this provide strong encouragement to take that technology to another level. And when companies make that commitment, the general public gets better, more advanced products as a result.

Ok, so I could go on and on. There are a lot of things in this bill that seem sketchy at first and then when we realize the implications of what these items are designed to do, it makes a lot more sense. There is a lot of grandstanding going on about wasteful spending and sattling our children with an incomprehensible debt. But here's the catch, for 8 years the Republicans have been cutting taxes without increasing services, and ringing up quite a debt for my generation. Now its time for decisive action. It is going to take something massive to get the economy moving again. And sadly, my very much unborn children (many years away), will probably be paying for it. Unless the end of the world comes and they're living in a Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome world...

In conclusion, none of us should be believing anyone's story in what the Stimulus Package is until we've actually read it ourselves. The Obama Administration needs to do a better job making this public, so we can all read and decide for ourselves. They spoke of change, that would be a refreshing change, making the entire plan available for review on a daily basis. I am CONFIDENT that there is pork in the plan. There are way too many Washington DC lifers still in Congress for there to not be. But the presumption that this entire plan is full of pork is completely erroneous. Every dollar spent in our society directly or indirectly influences the ability of someone to have a job and make payments on their mortgage or feed their family or pay for their kids to go to college. It may have been a better idea to divide up the Stimulus Package into smaller pieces of legistation, to make them more wieldy, more easily debated, more easily compromised on. But we're a little too far in the tank now to change that. This bill ain't perfect, but it seems to address an overwhelming number of needs that we have.