Preliminary Thoughts on the Stimulus Bill

The pundits and the Republicans just don’t get it. I know they think they get it. I know they sincerely think they are being level-headed looking out for the long-range concerns for the nation. I know that they suspect that secret, hidden supporters of those who have been “have nots” are trying to slip inappropriate items into the monolithic economic “recovery plan”. And they are sure that these items would never get approved independently. The Republicans believe and have convinced the pundits that what has happened is both myopic and insidious to the economic health of the nation, yea even the world.
This comes as no revelation that Republicans would take this tack. Much of what is involved in the stimulus plan and the bank recovery plan amounts to a repudiation of what Republicanism has wrought over the last decade, and perhaps even dating back to the Reagan era. What? The “free markets”, left unencumbered by “stifling” overregulation, could produce a meltdown of the overall economy? They would hide true costs and “leverage” the danger of national bankruptcy to the notion that profits can be made to rise steadily and without pause?? Say it ain’t so, Joe.
But how and why do the 24-hour cable TV experts climb aboard this train without asking where it’s going or what the fare is? What is going on with the news analysts who society tolerates in hopes they’ll help us analyze complicated issues?
The motivations and actions by both Republicans and media analysts are worthy of a full in-depth discussion. But at the moment I’m more intrigued by an aspect of the overall debate which is generating no intelligent discussion or consideration. It involves pondering what turns given expenditures or categories of expenditures into “pork” or “wasteful spending”. For this is what all of the anecdotal remarks and examples offered by Republicans and picked up by the media focus on. Millions for this or billions for that have been “slipped into” the bills or “rammed through” over the objections of suddenly thoughtful, prudent conservatives. But how do we know these projects are porky or wasteful? The implied answer is that they must be wasteful. Otherwise the previous administrations would have already championed them. These projects must not be vital and urgent. Otherwise the ruling body politic would have stepped up and addressed them.
They must be optional. We haven’t bothered to fund them, and we’re still here, aren’t we?
So, fixing a huge pothole on a heavily traveled road is considered “wasteful spending” if peoples or governments that could have funded its repair have demurred. It remains relegated to the status of “wasteful spending” until it becomes responsible for a fatal accident. Then we all of a sudden have “crumbling infrastructure”.
President Obama proposed spending billions rebuilding crumbling public schools. (Would these be schools in lower income inner cities and poor rural areas as opposed to wealthy suburbs?) WASTEFUL! But wait. We needed the president to tell us that many school buildings constructed 60+ years ago and not lovingly maintained are a worthy infrastructure expenditure?? Had local constituents of school districts voted repeatedly over the years to maintain low tax rates rather than support those buildings and their maintenance? And if so, do these collective local decisions translate into a fair declaration that the expenditure is “wasteful”?