Who Is The Stimulus Directed At?

Daniel Henninger at The Wall Street Journal examines the beneficiaries of the largess in the “stimulus” bill. His opinion is that the Republicans are very wise to stay as far away from this toxic waste of money as they can. Because the only people getting stimulated here is the Federal government.

Check your PC’s virus program, then pull down the nearly 700 pages of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Dive into its dank waters and what is most striking is how much “stimulus” money is being spent on the government’s own infrastructure. This bill isn’t economic stimulus. It’s self-stimulus.

(All sums here include the disorienting zeros, as in the bill.)

Title VI, Financial Services and General Government, says that “not less than $6,000,000,000 shall be used for construction, repair, and alteration of Federal buildings.” There’s enough money there to name a building after every Member of Congress.

The Bureau of Land Management gets $325,000,000 to spend fixing federal land, including “trail repair” and “remediation of abandoned mines or well sites,” no doubt left over from the 19th-century land rush.

There is, of course, quite a lot more, please read the whole thing. When all the Federal spending just to boost Federal agencies is laid out this way, one gets the sense of just what a colossal waste of taxpayer money this is. Worst of all, the suspicion that this increased spending on government will be the new floor for budgets is looming as well. In other words, this one-time “stimulus” may never go away.

If the Republicans can distance themselves far enough from this mess, they may well benefit politically. But they will need to start communicating better ideas – even if they can’t get the Democrats to play along with them for now.