Gallup: 53% Support $775 Billion Stimulus Congressional Democrats' 2010 Campaign Fund

Do something! Do something! If you can't do something smart, do something stupid, but do something!

New Gallup polling shows that 53% of Americans favor and 36% oppose Congress' passing a new $775 billion stimulus package of the type President-elect Barack Obama described in his Thursday speech on the economy. There is even higher support for specific elements it could include, such as major new government spending for infrastructure, income tax cuts, and tax incentives for businesses.

Michelle Malkin gives a shout-out to President Bush, saying he "pre-socialized" the economy for Obama. Indeed. It makes it politically difficult to advance the point that this is unwise and socialistic when our outgoing head of the party was pretty keen on a lot of this.

Presidents always have a self-interested incentive to spend now and put off bad economic times, even if doing so cripples the future economy. The difference now is that the media and one party is cheering wildly the notion that we shall run deficits up into the stratosphere, even if, as it may likely turn out, every one dollar of improvement in current economic performance results in, say, a three or four dollar loss of future economic performance.

Doesn't matter. The One cannot be allowed to fail, and if that means hamstringing the economy for 20 years, he must have at least a sluggishly growing economy by 2012.

And he'll also want a friendly Congress throughout this period, so if we have to spend a trillion more on bike paths and homeopathic remedies for the homeless to get some positive numbers by 2010, so be it.

Thanks to Warden.

VDH: Quoted at Instapundit:

For just one week we should ban the verb “stimulate” and the noun “stimulus” — and substitute instead the more honest “borrow,” or “print,” or “debt”; as in “The government plans to borrow another $1 trillion for the economy,” or “The administration today decided to print another $300 billion in cash.” Or “Congress met to consider a $1 trillion debt program.” But as it is now, the euphemisms only take us ever more distant from reality, as trillions of dollars are bandied about as if they were mere five and tens in the government wallet.

That's a good point, and not just for snark value. The public is naive about the economy. There may indeed be lots of Americans who assume, quite wrongly, that the US is sitting on a huge pile of wealth, squirreled away in Fort Knox and the warehouse in Raiders of the Lost Ark, we have prudently set aside for moments just like these.

It is the media's job to remind them that this is not the case.

The government cannot spend "its" money. It can take money from citizens and from future citizens, but it has little of "its" money to spend at all.

posted by Ace at 11:34 AM

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