Well, the stimulus package has gone the same direction as all other things Bush related. It's now just a few high ranking officials giving money to however they feel should have it with no concern for discertion or fallout. As granny doc points out, congress is shocked, shocked!, to learn that the Bush Administration would try and squeeze in one more gigantic fuck-up before they left office.
Remeber when there was no time to think about what we were doing? Remember when Henry Paulson said, "be scared!" and congress said, "how scared?" Well it seems that some people took the time to think through what they were doing.
From today's San Francisco Chronicle:
Meanwhile, the Chinese government has been very specific about how its money will be spent: on tax cuts, infrastructure and social programs such as health care and education. Some begged China to use its foreign reserves to bail out the U.S. financial system. Perhaps China had a look at the feeding frenzy on Capitol Hill before declining: The Chinese are shoring themselves up against the global doom by investing in their own country's domestic needs. What a concept.
Comparing the US to China, economically or otherwise, is not apples to apples. However, it's shocking that at the same time we were being told we had no options, China was carefully putting together a stimulus package that, you know, looks like it'll work.
Of course, China's fiscal position is drastically different from ours. China's national savings rate was a breathtaking 51.2 percent of GDP last year. This suggests that while overcommitted U.S. consumers (we're the country with the negative savings rate, remember?) panic, China's best route to keeping itself afloat lies in developing its own domestic economy and encouraging the Chinese to be consumers. The government realizes that it will be helped in this pursuit if it offers people better health care and education.[Emphasis mine]
While providing healthcare and infrastructure encourages the Chinese to be comsumers, it could also take some of the spending burden off Americans who are struggling to pay the bills. The principle behind the Chinese stimulus package is one we should be pursuing: bolstering the people, not the companies that got us into this mess. I know everyone is hopeful that, as President, Barack Obama will pursue this principle but that does change the fact that the crooks on Wall Street still got away with $700 billion of our money.
Many economists have pointed to the size of the Chinese package (China's GDP is about a quarter of the size of ours) to point out that, if anything, America needs to throw more money at the problem. They may well be right: Considering the depth of the crisis, this is no time for timidity.
It seems that this meme, that we need to be more bold, is starting to cement in the national dialogue. Good. We do need bold investments in healthcare, infrastructure and education and we need them now. Nonetheless, we cannot ignore this final theft perpetrated by the Bush Administration and enabled by the Democratic Congress.
But what's even more important than the size of our bailout is whether the money is being spent wisely: as an investment that will help the American economy recover and eventually, grow. And right now, the signs coming out of both Congress and the Treasury aren't comforting.
The end of this story is always foggy. We always ask, "When will we say enough?" or, "How will we hold them accountable?" The answer, for all our outrage, is the same every time. We vote more and more of these perpetrators and enablers, Democrat and Republican, out of Congress and put in more solid progressives. That answer isn't glamourus, but it's the truth.
So donate to the people who are still runnning.