“Every economist agrees that the government spending in a recession is essential”

Obviously not, Senator – as a recent economists’ conference in Nevada indicated.  And certainly the Republicans do not agree, as they have been criticizing the bill as the height of pork-barrel spending.  But this brings me to the second point of confusion – how to separate a genuine ideological clash from political maneuvering.  In a previous post, I mentioned some of the qualms that Republican congress members had with the original House bill, many of which I thought were legitimate.  However, as I also noted in that post, the sum of their complaints amounted to a very small percentage of the projected total spending.  So it seemed to me, upon further consideration, that their complaints were more likely a political tactic to undermine the Democrats political advantage.  The Republicans set the tone for the debate, and left the Democrats – including President Obama – scrambling to defend their positions.

How is the party with the clear advantage put on the defensive?   Probably because President Obama was insistent upon “reaching across the aisle” – which while honorable – opened the Democrats up to political attack.  It would seem to me that the skeleton crew of Republicans remaining after the massive Democratic victory in November, are those who are the most ideologically opposed to any Democratic initiative.  After all, Republicans in conservative strongholds were unlikely to lose their seats, meaning that most of the casualties were the more moderate in the party.

Therefore, President Obama would be more reaching across a chasm than an aisle.  And really, bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake is absurd.  The Democrats won handily, which signaled an ideological shift amongst the electorate, and left no real need for bipartisanship.  The voters elected to place the future – at least temporarily – in the hands of the Democrats, in the hope that they would at least do things differently than the previous administration.  It’s my opinion anyway, that partisanship is an unavoidable consequence of having parties at all, and I’d just as soon seem them dissolved.

Bipartisanship, in any case, would require a “reaching” from both sides, and in spite of President Obama’s efforts, it is pretty clear that most sitting Republicans had no real intention of doing so.  They are probably still in the process of licking their wounds and attempting to repair their damaged pride – and be damned if they were going to concede any further victory to Democrats in the way of compromise.  That much is obvious in how they used minor flaws in the House bill to criticize the overall initiative.  Furthermore, there is the irony of criticizing spending while advocating for sweeping tax cuts, both of which amount to the same thing – a massive and sustained national debt.  Both spending and reducing taxes bring about similar, if not the same results – and the Republicans’ proposed tax cuts would near triple the Democrats’ projected spending in a few years.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that there are two separate bills – the House version and the Senate version – which while they overlap considerably, will require some serious reconciliation before a final version can reach the President’s desk.  The Senate version, which initially raised the overall tab to more than $900 billion, has since been trimmed down in another attempt at compromise between Democrats and the few remaining moderates amongst the Republicans.   While some of those cuts came from the more extraneous provisions of the bill, a sizeable portion came from the bedrock of the Democratic agenda – most lamentably, funding for education.

So as I said in the beginning, the only thing that’s clear about the stimulus is that nothing is clear.  Hardly anyone can agree – with differences appearing between economists, along party lines, within parties along ideological lines (liberal vs. moderate vs. conservative) and even between the two houses of Congress.  Personal interests taint if not fully steer any motivations for supporting or opposing the legislation – Democrats stuffing it with agenda items, Republicans fighting it to make a political point, and individuals within each party arguing to ensure their own priorities are adequately represented in the final version.  All of this superseding the purpose of the bill  – to stimulate the economy.

With all of this bickering and maneuvering and chaos, how is anyone – most of all the average citizen – to make any sense of this debacle?  Because hardly anyone can agree, and because even economists – the presumed experts on the subject – can only speculate on the outcomes of any stimulus bill, we can only follow in the politicians’ footsteps, and evaluate the merits of the bill through the lens of those issues that are most important.  For those few of us who support ideology before candidates, and try to remove ourselves from partisan bickering, it would seem to be the only option.

The first and most obvious problem I have will the bill is the fact that I can barely read it.  While certianly my command of the English language is enough to understand every individual word of the text, it’s the particular use and order of those words in the bill that create a problem.  And I can’t be alone in this.  I wonder how many Americans even know that they have access to the full text of the bill, and for those who do and have tried to read it, how many fully understand it?

While my political orientation tends to align me with democratic (and/or liberal to progressive) politicians and agendas, I am by nature a skeptic and a cynic.  As such I do not really trust anyone, particularly politicians, who by their nature are deceptive, or at least regularly lie by omission.  This is of not unrelated to the fact that they use legalese – the purpose of which can only be to obfuscate their full intentions.

In spite of any previous ideological alignments, I am wary of the ARARA for at least some of the reasons stated by its primary opposition – the congressional Republicans.  Much of the bill does seem to involve issues that are not directly related to economic stimulus, but rather reflect some of the personal agendas of Democratic politicians.  Although many of these agendas are ones that I agree with – particularly any funding of education reform – I wonder if these initiatives will directly affect improvements to the national economy.  At the same time I wonder why this one bill has been stuffed with so many separate issues, not coincidentally the same issues that congressional Democrats have been pushing for years.

Frankly, the bill might as well be called the Democratic Agenda Act of 2009.  My ambivalence comes from the fact that I support much of this agenda, and that, as I said earlier, I am not clear on how closely related those agendas are to economic stimulus.

And finally, given the difficult language and sheer size of the bill, I have to wonder how many senators and representatives have even read it.  How many only skimmed the act to find the particular portion in which they were interested?  How many didn’t read it at all, but rather relied on word of mouth from a clerk or a colleague to sum it up for them?  How many, out of fear of falling out of step with the party, planned to go along with it in any case?

After the bank bailout of 2008, and the PATRIOT Act years prior, we have seen the consequences of the Congress passing massive bills chock full of agendas and sub-agendas that may or may not be related to their publicly stated purpose.  And they can be disastrous – leading from a complete violation of Constitutional rights on one hand to a blank check for greedy bank officials on the other.

So for now, as I continue to try to read the full text of the ARARA, I remain ambivalent.

As is their political nature, and in their perpetual push to undermine the public school system – and perhaps ultimately to forsake it completely in favor of private or parochial schools – many Republican members of Congress are opposed to this provision.  Fortunately for the schools, and for the children, they probably will not be able to stop it.

However, as much as I disagree with Republicans and social conservatives of any party on what’s necessary to improve education in the United States, I may agree that spending alone is not a fix.  Spending in any sector, as the Wall Street collapse has proven, requires rigorous oversight.

This would be another place where I disagree with Republicans, as I am certain most of them would rather leave all educational matters to the jurisdiction of the states.  Nevermind that the states have had jurisdiction all this time and have proven themselves in many cases – like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and many southern states – to be unworthy of the responsibility.

Corruption is everywhere, and the education sector is no exception.  From little crimes like low-level school administrators pocketing money intended to go towards programs and technology, to the larger scale offenses of companies like Edison sucking the money out of Philadelphia’s education budget only to effect absolutely no improvements, the public education system needs a watchful eye to ensure that all efforts are focused on improving the quality of our schools.

So I hope that this education stimulus is not merely another instance of throwing money at a problem, but a signal from President Obama that more attention will be paid to improving education nationwide.  It is vital that every penny of the $150 billion be tracked and accounted for if the stimulus is to have any lasting effect.

Ordinarily, we would have to find the text of the bill at the senate or house website, root through a bunch of legalese, and then attempt to translate it into intelligible language.  So Recovery.gov – assuming it will not be written in such dense language – is a great idea.  The only problem, however, is that the website currently has no information at all – the reason being that the bill has not yet passed.  Personally, I think we should be privy to the provisions of the bill before it passes.  That way we would have the opportunity to write to our senators and representatives and tell them whether or not we agree with those provisions.

Granted, the average citizen probably cannot grasp all the intricacies of American economics, and may not be poised to offer a detailed analysis of the bill, but we can certainly recognize – and oppose where necessary – those things that are obviously extraneous, like the tax cut for toy arrow makers that slipped into the previous stimulus bill.

So while I acknowledge the President’s efforts in reaching out to the public, I fear that Recovery.gov may be too little too late to allow us to truly engage in our democracy – something especially important when it comes to a bill a $900 billion price tag.