Stimulus Bill Is Full of Pork

The $800 billion stimulus bill contains billions of dollars in pork and wasteful spending on items that have nothing to do with stimulating the economy. As National Review observes, it increases subsidies for the arts, and includes “$5.2 billion for community-development block grants and ‘neighborhood stabilization activities,’ which ACORN is eligible to apply for.” Yes, the same ACORN that has a history of vote fraud and financial fraud and that helped swawn the mortgage crisis by promoting loans to people with bad credit.

And “the bill allocates $650 million for activities related to the switch from analog to digital TV, including $90 million to educate ‘vulnerable populations’ that they need to go out and get their converter boxes or lose their TV signals. Obviously, this is stimulative stuff: Any economist will tell you that you can’t get higher productivity and economic growth without access to reruns of Family Feud.”

Public support for the stimulus package has collapsed, despite support for it from Obama and Congressional leaders. The stimulus plan repeats mistakes made in the Great Depression that resulted in major job losses.

It also resembles the failed trillion-dollar stimulus plan in the Japan of the 1990s. That plan failed, leading to a decade of economic stagnation in Japan known as “The Lost Decade.”