The Wrong Priorities

It just came out the House passed a $174,000,000,000.00 jobs creation package. This comes at the heels of the already $800,000,000,000.00 stimulus package passed earlier this year with the same goal. With so much money being spent by as large a bureaucracy as the US federal government, it's difficult to tell how and when the money will be spent. The aim of this newest stimulus effort is public works and infrastructure, but the questions raised are will this work and can we afford it? We all know our government is in severe debt right now with lost jobs each month and GDP growing at a snail's pace. It's also clear that with an overhaul of the health care system around the corner, increased troop levels in Afghanistan, and a proposed cap and trade bill, we are banking our financial future on the foresight of our elected officials that have now have dipped low enough to count "jobs saved" as an accurate measure of success. If we can't quickly and efficiently spend stimulus dollars from the first stimulus package what makes anyone believe we will this time? What's clear is that the Democrats in Washington don't see fiscal responsibility and responsible use of federal power as the highest priority, but rather that themselves will be seen as the catalyst of recovery and they'll do so at literally any cost. The failures of our financial system and the Bush administration are behind us and the lessons learned should be used to further the goal of economic expansion and prosperity in the United States. Instead this administration is spending money with the kind of recklessness you'd think we've learned from. Economists have many tools at their theoretical disposal and deficit spending is one of them, but this has been taken to a level never seen before in our country. We need strong leadership and somehow confidence in our system needs to be addressed, not simply government spending for the sake of government spending. We are allocating dollars like it's monopoly money and if this pattern continues, that's exactly what the dollar will be.