Pearlstein: Congress Needs Econo-Training
Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein thinks we could create a bunch of jobs giving Congress individualized economics training:
Equally specious is the oft-heard complaint that even some of the immediate spending is not stimulative.
"This is not a stimulus plan, it's a spending plan," Nebraska's freshman senator, Mike Johanns (R), said Wednesday in a maiden floor speech full of budget-balancing orthodoxy that would have made Herbert Hoover proud. The stimulus bill, he declared, "won't create the promised jobs. It won't activate our economy."
Johanns was too busy yesterday to explain this radical departure from standard theory and practice. Where does the senator think the $800 billion will go? Down a rabbit hole? Even if the entire sum were to be stolen by federal employees and spent entirely on fast cars, fancy homes, gambling junkets and fancy clothes, it would still be an $800 billion increase in the demand for goods and services -- a pretty good working definition for economic stimulus. The only question is whether spending it on other things would create more long-term value, which it almost certainly would.
I don't agree with all of his points, but he does catch congressional representatives in some truly goofy rhetoric. Read the whole thing.