I Got Your Stimulus Right Here

Congress, by voting for its stimulus package, has decided that (unless you make more than $75,000) you deserve $600. $1,200 if you're married. $1,800 if you have a couple of kids. The check's in the mail — almost. Excited yet?

Let the Nobody's Business time machine whisk you back to April 2006:

The Senate Republican plan to mail $100 checks to voters to ease the burden of high gasoline prices is eliciting more scorn than gratitude from the very people it was intended to help. Aides for several Republican senators reported a surge of calls and e-mail messages from constituents ridiculing the rebate as a paltry and transparent effort to pander to voters [in an election year].

Remember those days? Remember how disdainful people were when they heard that, whoop-dee-do, Congress was contemplating mailing them a check worth a couple of tanks of gas? Remember the imagery it evoked? Marie Antoinette engaging in voodoo economics. Beltway trough-feeders in bespoke suits getting jiggy with the people's money, magnanimously giving back a few crumbs after having picked our pockets clean.

So now that there's a stimulus package whose outsized fiscal idiocy is matched only by the outsized enthusiastic bipartisan support of our betters in Washington D.C., what has changed, fundamentally? If we scoffed at a check worth a couple of tanks of gas, presumably on the principle of it, why would we find a check worth ten or twelve tanks a fine idea? Does the increased amount really take care of our previous qualms? Are we too proud to be streetwalkers selling blowjobs for a quick 25 bucks, but happy to pimp ourselves out for a couple of hundred in the velours-clad splendor of Madam Pelosi's Erotic Salon?

Reminds me of an old joke that regular readers of this blog may remember:

A beautiful woman in a casino bar is approached by a guest who offers her 50 bucks if she'll go up to his room with him. Stung, she protests and refuses.

"Hey, I'm really sorry," he tells her. "It was rude of me to make someone as classy-looking as you an offer that low. Tell you what, I just won a million dollars at the roulette table and I'm in the mood to party. How about we go upstairs for half an hour and I give you half of my winnings?"

She thinks about it for a few seconds: A half a million dollars for 30 minutes in the sack. "Well, as long as you won't think I'm a ho," she finally says, smiling her consent, touching his arm.

"Honey, we both know what you are," he replies. "Now we're just talking about the price."

Ha!

The stimulus package irks the hell out of me for lots of reasons.

Because there's no free lunch. Because we'll be paying for this unhinged irresponsibility ourselves, next year or in a decade or two or whenever the matter of our national deficit (and our humongous fiscal debt to China) can no longer be pushed into the future. Because the government's stimulus is part shell game, part Ponzi scheme. And because from George W. Bush to Hillary Clinton, everyone in Washington D.C. is selling the payout as a grand, generous gesture, hoping that no one will notice that it was your own money to begin with.

In addition, the political classes tell us it's a jumpstart but I suspect they know it's an albatross. In whose fantasy world do you improve the economy by raiding the treasury to the tune of 150 to 200 billion dollars — money that's not even there to begin with? Even if you honestly believe there'll be some positive effect from the blithe giveaway, this much is undisputed: the measure will make the hole in America's budget roughly seventy percent bigger, at least in the short term. And that's in a year in which the tide of red ink was already expected to swell by more than fifty percent even without a stimulus package.

I hardly feel better knowing that stimulus dollars sent to couples with kids could be more than twice what childless taxpayers will receive. People who have no children already pay disproportionate taxes, to prop up their towns' school spending; now the government deals them another sucker punch by (again) making them pay for other people's kids. (For the record, I'm the father of two young girls.)

Do we really want the government to give us bonuses for, in effect, procreating?

Over at Eternity Road, Francis Porretto calls the stimulus by its proper name:

[T]he amount of a family's rebate will vary directly with the number of its minor children and inversely with its income. A working-class family with ten children and a family income of $48,000 will be sent $4200; a childless couple with an income of $150,000 or more will receive nothing. That working-class family's federal tax burden is zero, whereas the childless couple, depending on state income taxes and property taxes, probably pays $15,000 to $20,000. [The childless couple must have a very talented accountant; I'd estimate that their tax burden is closer to $50,000, RvB]. So it isn't a tax rebate either; it's a transfer of funds from the sector that pays the lion's share of federal taxes to the sector that gets away lightly.

Would a conservative — one who holds that a dollar earned belongs in the pocket of him who earned it —€” approve such a measure?

I don't know, I don't call myself a conservative, but it's a fair question. By signing off on the stimulus measure, the GOP's shining stars, from John Boehner on down, have once again demonstrated that their party most assuredly no longer stands for free markets, low taxes, and limited government.

This is demonstrable in another way, too. Think about it: After seven years of 'economy-boosting' tax cuts for the wealthy, the economy is in fact in the doldrums. So what does Congress do? It borrows 160 billion, maybe more, and gives all that cash to non-wealthy people, including the poor. We hear no more talk of trickle-down economics, of course; now the opposite is supposed to be true —€” now it's blue-collar people and the middle class who should be counted on to spend the windfall and resuscitate the economy. Even Congressional Republicans have no doubt about the efficacy of the approach.

Democrats can be forgiven for wanting to increase taxes on the wealthy and transfer that money to the poor. Republicans have now given them both license and cover to do exactly that.

Despite the victory speeches and the mutual backslapping, there are no heroes in this deal, on either side of the aisle.

My check should arrive (unbidden, I might add) in May or June. If you know of a creative way to spend $1,800 in a manner that demonstrates how logically bankrupt, fiscally flighty, and just plain nuts the stimulus measure is, I'm all ears.

Comments

[KipEsquire]

Actually, Congress decided I don't deserve it, being what one might call an "enhanced taxpayer." Go figure.

But Lewis Black certainly agrees with you:

http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1200798172.shtml

[tomk]

Thanks for the great post. That photo...I saw it last summer, what can you say.

This is an interesting endorsement of Obama, especially the part about his push for videotaped interrogations in Chicago.

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/02/obama-actually.html

[tomk]

I actually meant to comment on the previous post, the one with the Nina Berman photo and the photo of you demonstrating.

I agree with you that the rebate is bullshit. I don't quite get why we're supposed to spend more for the nation's economic health but save more for our personal economic health.

[delurking]

"If you know of a creative way to spend $1,800 in a manner that demonstrates how logically bankrupt, fiscally flighty, and just plain nuts the stimulus measure is, I'm all ears."

Invest in government bonds.

[j. puckett]

"If you know of a creative way to spend $1,800 in a manner that demonstrates how logically bankrupt, fiscally flighty, and just plain nuts the stimulus measure is, I'm all ears."

Take a nice trip to [fill in the name of any foreign country here] and spend it all there (Anywhere in Great Britain or Europe and that money will be gone in a couple of days). Then if anybody questions your patriotism just say you've been planning the trip for years and the graciousness of the federal government finally allowed your dreams to come true. Thanks Uncle Sam!

[GreginOz]

See www.agora.com "Agora" means Marketplace in Ancient Greek. The website promotes putting your money ONLY in the Black Market, always pay cash for a discount and BINGO! None of your money gets grabbed by the IRS! Ideally buy drugs then onsell them for a profit, thus removong MORE money from the honeypot. Here in Oz now, every new mother gets gifted with $5000, for EVERY child! I have a girlfriend, no kids, my money is stolen from me and given to single mum druggies and trailer trash so they can buy an 80" TV. Go figure...

[Phelps]

You can't really call it a rebate, since a significant number of beneficiaries never paid anything in to start with. It is simply a broad swath welfare check.

This did jump out at me, though:

After seven years of 'economy-boosting' tax cuts for the wealthy, the economy is in fact in the doldrums.

Are you saying that if we just taxed the bejeezus out of the rich, the economy would be booming? It seems like a non sequitor to me.

[Martin Owens]

You are right on the money about the Republicans deserting their core values. If they get their asses kicked in November , that will be because they worked hard to deserve it.

What to do with the money? What a silly question! Everybody here in California knows that government windfalls are for paying down your ever increasing debt, not for buying things- no! You buy things with the phantom equity from that overpriced house of yours . At least until the ARM jacks the mortgage up to $10,000 a month....

[greg]

agora.com I'll have to check it out. I like the idea of keeping it out of the governments hands as long as possible. You know:

drugs
hookers
and ebay purchases!

[Token]

Buy cigarettes from Canada or any other country (to avoid the taxes you would have to pay here) and hand them out to the people who are forced to smoke outside "smoke-free" establishments.