Austin, Texas, could use $886,000 to build a 36-hole "disc golf" course, for frisbee tossing. It would be "environmentally and financially sustainable." John Hrncir, government-relations officer, says the project list "was put together on very short notice," and "we are not going to submit anything that is questionable when we seek actual funding."

GOP games

By playing games with this bailout, Republicans are practicing obstructionism that borders on treason.

Even with a boatload of sweetener in the form of tax cuts and pork, not a single Republican voted for the bill.

This is not bipartisanship; this is bald-faced obstructionism.

These shameful actions, while thankfully ineffective, show the American people exactly what the score is: Republicans are willing to take their ball and go home while we freeze and starve in the wake of their financial corruption orgy.

What the Democrats have done is write down every single item on their liberal wish list, append dollar amounts next to the items seemingly at random, and call it "stimulus." The president wanted the bill to be free of pet projects and include business tax cuts. But no one told Pelosi's appopriators. They are using the current troubles to push through a decades-old domestic policy agenda. The spending--$50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, $400 million for global warming studies--demonstrates that the bill has no overarching logic.

Which makes it a major disappointment. Almost everybody agrees that the economy is a mess and that fiscal policy might help tidy things up. But $6.2 billion for "home weatherization"?

The problem with the House plan is that it is ineffective even on Keynesian grounds. Keynes said that, once monetary policy has reached its limit, fiscal policy must take priority. In other words, when interest rates have effectively reached zero, governments must lower taxes and increase spending to rebalance the economy. But the House bill is half-baked Keynes. And it will fail.

It will fail because it is imperfectly designed. A well-designed stimulus meets three criteria. It's large. It's fast. You like what you get out of it. But the Democratic plan is none of these. When you look closely at the House bill, you realize that it's not so big after all. Nor will the money be spent quickly. And the things we get out of it? Small fry.

Note to [Rep. David] Obey [(D-WI)]: Hoover massively expanded government spending and signed into law a horrible protectionist piece of legislation known as Smoot-Hawley. At the same time, he used the bully pulpit to hector businesses into keeping wages and prices high which only made it harder for a puffed-up economy to go through a painful but transitory adjustment. Given what you just passed and all the anti-China rhetoric coming from the White House, what exactly are you guys planning on doing differently?

Note to Republicans: Given your fecklessness when in power and serving under a GOP president, most of you have zero credibility when it comes to your newfound spines and concern for fiscal restraint. Work hard to gain back whatever smidgen of credibility by being consistently against big government and not just against big government Democrats.

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before."

So said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in November, and Democrats in Congress are certainly taking his advice to heart. The 647-page, $825 billion House legislation is being sold as an economic "stimulus," but now that Democrats have finally released the details we understand Rahm's point much better. This is a political wonder that manages to spend money on just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years.

...by our estimate only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus. And even many of these projects aren't likely to help the economy immediately. As Peter Orszag, the President's new budget director, told Congress a year ago, "even those [public works] that are 'on the shelf' generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to provide timely stimulus to the economy."
..,

This is supposed to be a new era of bipartisanship, but this bill was written based on the wish list of every living -- or dead -- Democratic interest group. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it, "We won the election. We wrote the bill." So they did. Republicans should let them take all of the credit.

As a conservative economist, I might be expected to oppose a stimulus plan. In fact, on this page in October, I declared my support for a stimulus. But the fiscal package now before Congress needs to be thoroughly revised. In its current form, it does too little to raise national spending and employment. It would be better for the Senate to delay legislation for a month, or even two, if that's what it takes to produce a much better bill. We cannot afford an $800 billion mistake.
...

The problem with the current stimulus plan is not that it is too big but that it delivers too little extra employment and income for such a large fiscal deficit. It is worth taking the time to get it right.