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Where's The Outrage?

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 21, 2009

Where's The Outrage?

I am amazed and appalled by the degree of passive public acceptance that has greeted the so-called stimulus bill that President Barack Obama signed this week.

This is the largest amount of money ever spent by a single act of Congress. Yet, despite solemn promises to the contrary, it was passed with almost no reasoned consideration by either the citizens who will pay for it or their elected representatives.

Both the president and congressional leaders violated solemn promises the bill would be available for several days of public review prior to voting. In fact no single individual either in Congress or outside it even read all its 1,434 pages before it was enacted.

Its sponsors claim this bill will generate 3.5 million jobs - although the Congressional Budget Office says the probable number is more like half that, and that its provisions will actually decrease our long-term economic growth. Even if the more optimistic figure is granted, that implies a cost per job created of about $225,000.

How many more real jobs could be created by small businesses at far less cost per job?

And many of the jobs that are created will be temporary construction work, rather than long-term jobs that keep our economy growing.

An estimated 600,000 of the jobs created will be government jobs that, rather than grow the productive parts of our economy, become a permanent drain on future revenues.

But whether you believe the bill will help the country recover from the current recession more quickly than it otherwise would have, every American should be outraged by the process that created it, as well as by the fundamental changes in our society it implements without even minimal public debate.

Policies established by this bill fundamentally rewrite the social contract between the American people and their government.

It massively expands the federal government's role in the day-to-day life of virtually every citizen, business and civic organization. It rewards states for adding people to their welfare rolls, rather than for helping them find gainful employment.

It bails out states that have spent irresponsibly at the expense of taxpayers in states that have been fiscally prudent. It reverses the highly successful welfare reforms enacted under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, drastically expanding the welfare state. It censors religious speech and worship on school campuses by prohibiting use of funds for facilities that are used for sectarian instruction or religious worship.

It establishes "Buy American" policies that insure that projects it funds will cost more than they could have, while inviting retaliatory anti-trade measures similar to those that are widely blamed for having prolonged the Great Depression by several years. It requires construction jobs it creates to be done only by unionized employees, increasing the cost of those projects, while freezing out the majority of employees in the construction business who do not belong to unions.

It greatly shifts the power over health care decisions from individuals to government by creating a new federal health board to decide which medical services are "effective," thus preempting the clinical decisions of private physicians.

Such far-reaching, revolutionary policy changes to our welfare system, our health care, our trade policies, etc. that are buried in this bill should have been the subject of extensive public debate.

In the past that debate occurred, no matter who was in the White House or who controlled the majority in Congress. That is how a democracy should make important decisions.

Instead this bill reflects a "We won, we'll do whatever we want!" attitude that can only undermine public faith in our elected officials and our government. It promises to drag our political process deeper into unproductive partisanship and rancor instead of fostering the attitude of shared vision and responsibility that our country needs more disparately than ever in these difficult times.

Where is the outrage over that? Does anyone still care whether or not we have a government of the people, by the people and for the people?

Jerry Lebo

Spring Hill

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