I Loves Me Some Barney Frank

He's funny looking and talks funny, but Massachusetts Representative Barney Fran has a way with words. Here are his comments about Republican efforts to preserve funding for the F-22:

These arguments will come from the very people who denied that the economic recovery plan created any jobs. We have a very odd economic philosophy in Washington: It’s called weaponized Keynesianism. It is the view that the government does not create jobs when it funds the building of bridges or important research or retrains workers, but when it builds airplanes that are never going to be used in combat, that is of course economic salvation.

Surprise Surprise Surprise

South Carolina governor Mark Sanford has decided at the eleventh hour to accept the federal stimulus package. I’m shocked—shocked!—by this reversal of his principled position.

Only a true cynic would think even for an instant that Sanford saw this as win-win for himself. First he got to polish his conservative bona fides by trashing the stimulus as a socialistic corruption of the traditions that made this country great. Then he could point to South Carolina’s 11% unemployment rate and say he had to take the money against his will and better judgment because his people are hurtin’ bad.

He might as well announce the creation of his exploratory committee for a 2012 presidential run now and get it over with.

The Lights Are On, But Nobody's Home

I normally have far more regard for Midwestern sensibility than I do for the ADD-addled decision-making processes used on the coasts. I’m going to have to reevaluate that, if Jay Emler gets his way.

Mr. Emler is the chairman of the Kansas Ways and Means Committee. The article I read doesn’t say if he’s a Republican or a Democrat, which is fine by me; I can’t be accused of bias by either side. His plan for Kansas’ share of the economic stimulus money is to bank it for a rainy day. Honest to God.

"When [the stimulus] runs out, we're going to be in a world of hurt . . . so I'd rather see this go into a fund that we would not be able to access except for emergencies," Emler said. "While this is a 'stimulus' package, that's not how I run my personal life. I don't know a whole lot of people who go out and spend if they realize that in two years they're not going to have money."

It doesn’t say what Mr. Emler considers to be an emergency. I guess if he was in debt and his roof blew off he’d just sit in the rain until times got better. The money helps no one if Kansas sits on it. It’s a stimulus, and it only stimulates if it’s in use. Saving it for a rainier day is the surest way to ensure you’ll need it later.

The almost willful inability of some presumably intelligent people to grasp the simplest concepts is astounding, if those concepts run counter to their pre-conceived notions. Forget conservative and liberal. There is no more dangerous philosophy than believing you already know everything you need to know to successfully confront a previously unseen situation.

Stimulating Conversation

I’ll keep this simple, in case a Republican reads it.

The American economy is like your house. When credit was loose and largely unsupervised, you bought this house, probably paid a little more than you should have. Times were good and credit was easy, so you bought a BMW for yourself and an Escalade for the wife to chauffer the kids in. Big screen HD television. Nice summer vacation and flew away for a week every Spring Break. Kids all have Wiis and iPods. Mom has a treadmill and Dad has a custom-fitted set of Calloways. The interest on the debts is an irritant, but not a deterrent. Household maintenance, never glamorous, is neglected.

Now it’s winter. The roof leaks. The furnace doesn’t work. The foundation has cracks that affect the plumbing and the toilets don’t flush. The house is rapidly becoming unlivable, due in large part to your neglect.

What do you do?

If you’re a Republican, you rummage through the attic and find your principles of fiscal conservatism. Debt is bad. These things will take care of themselves over time.

If you’re a sapient life form, you swallow hard and realize the only way to get out of the hole your profligate spending has dug for you is through more spending. Not spending on just anything. Fix the roof. Re-seal the foundation. Repair the plumbing. Get a new furnace. Pay the increased medical bills you incurred because your seven-figure house was an unhealthy hovel. Yes, it’s more debt, and you don’t have a good idea how you’ll pay it back yet, but it won’t matter if you can’t get over this current hump.

I may be a social liberal, but I’m a fiscal conservative. I don’t buy anything I don’t have the money for. My only current debt is a mortgage payment. (I’ll have a car payment again someday, but the current Honda is paid for.) I have a big screen HD TV that I saved up for before I bought it. I have well established the bona fides for my distaste for debt. Yet I am also a sapient life form, and I recognize what has to be done here. It goes against my ideology, but I live in a brick-and-mortar world, not some theoretical construct, so I will swallow hard and accept reality, because no problem can be fixed until you recognize it.

Is that simple enough, you Joe the Plumber loving, redneck, willfully ignorant motherfuckers?

Throw Money at It

That’s the standard Republic Party reply when Democrats come up with a program. “Those tax and spend Democrats just want to throw money at the problem.” Let’s see how well that argument holds up.

Since the Depression, Democrats have preferred government-sponsored job programs for economic stimulus. The Depression was full of them: WPA, TVA, Rural Electrification. Whatever kept people working and off welfare. Build roads, bridges, buildings. Run phone and electrical lines. Keep people busy while preparing the nation for the eventual good times, because having to play catch-up can stifle an economic rebound faster than anything.

This approach has benefits. First and foremost, the money wasn’t just flowing one way. People who are working pay taxes, as opposed to just taking in money like those collecting unemployment insurance and welfare. (Republics shouldn’t have to be reminded of this.) Same thing for the companies who get the contracts to actually do the work.

Even better, the program doesn’t have to work as well as expected in order to reap its rewards. Even if the economy doesn’t recover as much as you’d like, you’ve still fixed the roads and bridges, laid cable and fiber (the 21st Century equivalent of electric and phone lines). These are tangible benefits that will be there, ready and waiting, when things finally do get going again.

The Republic Party, on the other hand, likes to put checks in the mail, in the hope that people will spend them on goods and services. This approach, which owes much to the “trickle down” school of economics, is unreliable at best. Sometimes it’s a downright fallacy, as is so much of trickle down theory.

Let’s take this year’s example, where millions of people got $300 checks. What was the root of the economic problem? Overextension of credit. What did a lot of people do with the money? They paid bills. A worth endeavor, but hardly stimulating to the manufacturing or sales segments of the economy. Even worse, when it didn’t work, all we had to show for it was a bugger deficit.

Getting real work to take place will create a “bubble up” economy by putting the money in the hands of the people who need it most, and will be most likely to recirculate it in the desired manner, namely those who actually need it to make ends meet. Why this remains such a revolutionary concept is the real puzzler.

Putting people to work to accomplish something, or sending checks and hoping for the best. Who’s really throwing money at the problem?