In his brief press conference today, Barack Obama announced that there would be no earmarks allowed in his stimulus package. He stated that there would be no unreviewed projects. It was unclear whether he meant that the Administration would be picking the projects under a broad grant from Congress, or whether any projects inserted by individual members of Congress would have to be reviewed by the relevant Congressional committees, or whether he meant something else.
Whatever was intended, any restrictions on earmarking would be a good thing. While I oppose a big government spending program, favoring tax reductions instead, if we must have a big infrastructure program, we should also hope for structural restrictions to reduce waste and pork. Obama also promised transparency, with (as I understood him) individual projects identified online.
While Obama didn't go as far as McCain pledged to do in his campaign (eliminate earmarks altogether), he did pledge today to eliminate earmarks in the bill that might be the biggest pork-spending opportunity that Congress has ever considered — which is a major step. Just how much waste this move prevents will depend a lot on how the Obama administration chooses particular projects.
My understanding is that earmarks are tacked on in the Senate-House conference after bills are voted on by the individual houses. It should be fairly easy to determine what appeared overnight.
Okey dokey.
But it's not too early to blame Obama for the $8.5 trillion handed out under the Bush administration!
I'll bet he's trying to fix the economy even now! The nerve! *harrumph!*
What is the whole stimulus package if not a collection of earmarks?
My state (and I'm sure many others) sent a multi-billion dollar wishlist of pet projects to Obama's team for inclusion in the stimulus package. If that's not an earmark, what is?
Better just to admit the sad state of our country's current economic policy: the best and brightest in our country have concluded that our continued economic survival is best assured by soliciting a trillion dollars of pet, pork barrel projects.
*Congress has their say with earmarks on how the money is spent instead of handing the President a blank check.
The is no doubt, however, that we have long neglected our infrastructure. We can either wait until more bridges fall down, or we can fix them now. To me, it makes sense to fix them now, and that in itself is a good thing. If it helps stimulate the economy in some small measure, that's even better.
So: Unless people have a better idea on how to stimulate the economy, or you think that we should just let our infrastructure crumble and be a further drag on our economy, then I think people should support this.
On the contrary: if we must have a big infrastructure program, we should hope that it's as wasteful and pork-laden as possible, so as to discredit the architects of the program as well as proposals for similar programs in the future.
Done properly, infrastructure maintenance shouldn't be stimulative. That is, it should be occurring in good times or bad. You can't meaningfully move maintenance activities in time. Changing your car's oil twice today doesn't mean you can go twice as long before you have to change the oil, it just means you wasted an oil change. That's not stimulative, it's just wasteful.
(Also please note that the bridge collapse was due to a design flaw that was exacerbated by maintenance efforts - it was emphatically not due to a lack of maintenance.)
And as far as creating infrastructure for stimulative purposes, well, that didn't work out so well in Japan when they're financial and real estate sectors collapsed, did it?
I don't need to have a better idea to recognize that this particular plan is a bad idea.
Jim Lindgren
Agreed, what the bill is being sold as (“rebuilding our nation’s crumbling infrastructure”) and what the money is actually going to be used for are probably two very different things. Moreover, since much of the spending is for “aid to State and local governments,” it means that at the federal level we are going to be providing “emergency relief” for State and local governments that previously had plenty of money to spend on vanity projects like building new sports arenas or subsidies to encourage businesses to relocate from other States rather than taking care of their own local infrastructure projects that they now expect federal taxpayers to fund.
If Obama thinks he can dictate terms to Congress, he is in for a rude awakening. He will learn fast who really holds the power in D.C.
Well that's where the rubber meets the road, isn't it? Obama might want a $755 billion stimulus/tax/boondoggle/porkfest, and he might want a certain type of change to the tax code, but is he going to veto the bill if it comes in at $900 billion, or doesn't have enough windmill subsidies, or raises taxes on joint filers making more than $100k?
I can't imagine that he wants that kind of political fight that early on, especially if if hopes to do something more ambitious in the second half of the year, like introduce some kind of health insurance program.
Well that depends on the infrastructure being built. Some (like the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere") don't add more value than they cost. Others do (largely because the private sector cannot do things like build roads or subways). Leaving aside the fact that most of the most beneficial large infrastructure projects were built 50-100 years ago (which is why every major US city already has a subway) and that most of the stimulus will likely be wasted rebuilding bridges that are perfectly fine and building non-infrastructure related things like parks, it's at least conceivable that the stimulus could add value.
After all, if the projects were so financially attractive, then private enterprise would likely find a way to build and charge for them. But most of them will never pay for themselves, regardless of how you try to run the figures.
That of course assumes that we are talking useful infrastructure construction. But in many cases, we probably are not. Others above have mentioned parks, etc. How many more Robert Byrd parks, bridges, and highways are going to come of this? But remember that another major Obama and Democratic constituency are the greens, and that means that any bill that includes road construction or repair is also going to have to include a lot of money for green causes such as mass transit, alternate fuels, etc. just to balance things out. Projects where the payback is in the centuries, instead of decades.
or it just means that the benefits are distributed too diffusely for any single private entity to profit off of. these small benefits when added up to a whole however may exceed costs.
As a historical note, I've read that Jimmy Carter started his presidency this (honorable) way, threatening all sorts of things unless Congress stopped sending him pork laden bills, but lost the fight against his own party and never regained congressional support.
So conservatives cannot have it both ways. Either one subscribes to free market economic theory or one does not. If you believe in mainstream economic theory, you recognize the necessity of government spending on infrastructure.
Moreover, transportation costs have historically been one of the largest impediments to economic development.
There exists substantial justifivcation for the utilization of stimulus money on infrastructure improvements. This foregoing is but one of those reasons.
Seriously, what is he going to do? Veto his own $800 billion spending initiative because it contains $50 billion in earmarks?
I don't generally favor stimulus packages of this type because I see no reason to think it will actually work, and it will greatly increase the national debt.
On the other hand, Mr. Obama has stated he expects trillion dollar deficits for years to come, which will result in a debt so large it can never conceivably be paid off (not that it's a sure thing the current debt will ever be paid off).
This relieves me of any obligation to consider future generations, as the dollar will inevitably collapse. Therefore the only sane course of action is to take "my" piece of the package now and purchase gold. And I can do so guilt-free.
Rant finished.
Massive civil disobedience of a *federal law* in the event Obama is illegitimately inaugurated would help bring this matter to the public's attention.
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