"Impotent Economic Stimulus"

Sometime soon an itsy-bitsy sliver of economic stimulus will appear in your mailbox. Like most economic stimulus packages this serves one main purpose, and it isn't economic stimulus.

The biggest benefit to come from any economic stimulus package from the federal government is that it gives a whiff of validity to claims by the White House and legislators that they have been doing good things for the voters. Beyond the whiff there will be no validity to such claims.

The myth behind this package (backed, apparently, by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress) is that by putting another $800 in the pockets of taxpayers the resulting spending will pull our economy from the brink of recession. Fine and dandy. But what are we going to do with those extra $800 which the government is going to borrow for each of us?

I'd say that the vast majority of it will be rushed over to Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy for the next pile of junk made in China. Won't the Chinese businessmen be glad to see that money coming? They will be so glad to get their hands on the money that they'll even lend our government the 150 billion dollars needed for us to buy more clothes, shoes, game boxes, televisions, telephones, computers, and MP3 players from them.

Ironically, it is borrowing, both as a government and as individuals, that has brought us to the brink of this recession to begin with. Somehow, the so-called leaders in Washington figure that borrowing yet another 150 billion is just what the doctor ordered.

What we need to do right now, as a government, is to collect more taxes and payoff some of the debt that our last seven years of reckless spending has made so much worse. We need to say to the rich people of this country that we who are not so rich are taking back some of the money that we have been giving them in the form of our labor. The rich have manipulated our taxes for so long that they are able to make money from the borrowing that has been costing the majority of Americans our jobs and our level of living.

Taxing the rich, for a change, would be a real economic stimulus.

The other thing we can do to stimulate the economy is bring our troops back from Iraq today. The billions of dollars we squander in Iraq produce absolutely nothing – except heartache and ill will. The time is well past for putting an end to the folly that will be President Bush's legacy. This is President Bush's failure. America's failure is that we allowed him to do this. We will be paying for this failure for several generations to come.