I don’t make it hidden that I’m a big fan of Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor under President Clinton. However, I’ve got to say this. I don’t think the amount of the stimulus, at this point, is the problem with how the stimulus has been utilized so far. I think it’s really the number of federal employees going over various project submissions that has been the problem…there aren’t enough of them.
This is one case where having some more bureaucrats would be a good thing. There’s a big heap of money, a lot of people on unemployment insurance, and that money should be putting those people to work so the government can get some real return on their investment, instead of giving them enough to just “hang on” and thus, not really drive the economy at all.
We need more people looking at each proposal, making sure that the proposal is in line with what the spirit of the stimulus’s purpose is (it’s not to help some state buy a bunch of windmills made in China, it’s meant for people here to buy windmills made by other Americans, thus putting more people back to work all around AND helping us get off our dependence on foreign energy). It’s not meant to make a private company rich off the public’s taxpayer dollars like a lot of these “private/public partnerships” (which are really only approved for political reasons…some politician doesn’t want to be seen as a “big government” type, so he/she makes some corporation that ends up charging the public again to use what the public paid for fat off taxpayer dollars).
Less than half of that stimulus package has even been spent because so many projects have been backed up under review. The administration can’t hire some of these people without getting them approved by a Congress that is deadlocked on an issue they should all be agreeing with and moving on from…Health Care…that they’re only fighting over for purely political reasons. (Don’t buy into that philosophical differences crap the Republicans have offered up…why would it have taken so long for them to get their own proposal written? Why haven’t they been working on this over the last 8 years? Why wouldn’t they realize that it’s politically expedient to protect the health of their citizens in the face of a health care system that has been raising it’s premiums…and their CEO’s paychecks…and blocking out competition in most states? It’s because the Republicans are ashamed that they needed the corporate campaign donations from the insurance companies so much. After all, the majority of the people in this country are really basically Democrats, not Republicans…Republicans just talk louder and puff themselves up more.)
No, we need to get more people in there to review these projects and get them moved on faster, get people back to work and off unemployment. When we burn through those dollars and the job situation isn’t turning around, THEN it’s time to start talking about putting some money back in that pot and keeping it running. Turning the economy around should be viewed as an ongoing thing. That’s how FDR did it…0% unemployment, but he used a World War as a catalyst to get that going. We’ve got a harder job ahead of us, because we don’t have that political instrument to use to tease the less forward-thinking of us forward.