The much-vaunted stimulus bill has turned out to be a nauseating, pork-laden mess. Score one for the cynics as President Obama’s credibility takes a hard and early hit.

Earlier this week, The New York Times posted a recipe for something called “the Bacon Explosion.”

This “massive torpedo-shaped amalgamation,” as the Old Gray Lady refers to it, consists of “two pounds of bacon woven through and around two pounds of sausage and slathered in barbecue sauce.”

I think I felt my arteries constrict just typing that sentence. If you want to see a close-up of the Bacon Explosion in all its coronary-inducing glory, check out the NYT piece here.

Now, two pounds of slathered pork might be a big deal in Kansas City (where the Bacon Explosion finds its roots). But in Washington D.C., that’s kid stuff.

That Ain’t Nuthin’

We saw a much bigger – and far more nauseating – “Bacon Explosion” this week when the new 647-page, $825 billion stimulus bill passed the House.

To give you a “taste” of what this pork-laden monstrosity contains, check out this excerpt from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s appearance on CBS.

CBS: Can you honestly say that every program in this plan is solely to stimulate the economy?

Pelosi: (nods) Yes I will.

CBS: How does $335 million in STD [sexually transmitted disease] prevention stimulate the economy?

Pelosi: I’ll tell you how – there is a, uh... I’m a big believer in prevention. And we have, uh – there’s a, uh, part of the bill on the health side of it that is about prevention. It is about, uh, it being less expensive to the states to do these prevention measures...

Okey dokey, Ms. Pelosi. I guess she took the word “stimulate” to mean something else there... hoping folks will loosen up and have a little more fun perhaps?

(Say, could this be the Democrat version of W’s exhortation to “go out and shop” after 9/11?)

A Real Disappointment

Let me put the snark aside and be serious for a second here: This bill is a real disappointment.

A number of commentators – including many of my fellow scribes in the newsletter-publishing world – were ready to judge President Obama a failure even before he took office. I was not one of those.

If you had to peg me somewhere on the political spectrum, I would call myself a pragmatic libertarian with a strong aversion to sound bites. It’s my experience that pretty much every political ideology – heck, maybe every ideology period – delves into unworkable extremes when pushed too far into “true believer” territory.

Left-wing, right-wing, socialist, libertarian, Chicago school, Keynesian school, you name it. (When it comes to economics, I’m partial to the Austrian school myself... but even there I take things with a grain of salt.) There are many flavors of kool-aid, and anyone with a fill-in-the-blank answer for how to fix the world’s problems in three easy steps is probably drinking some. As H.L. Mencken once said: “There is always an easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.”

So, with that in mind, I was willing to give President Obama some benefit of the doubt.

In the course of his campaign, Obama showed a high degree of technical proficiency (important in a leader, as we learned disastrously via Bush’s lack of it)... he showed that he could run a tight ship... and of course the guy proved himself to be an excellent communicator, especially under pressure.

For all that, would the new guy be just like all the rest? Would the “change” prove to nothing but hot air?

Certainly possible, I thought to myself. Professional cynic that I am, though, I still found room to be open-minded.

After all, America really does need hundreds of billions to trillions worth of infrastructure upgrades... we really could benefit from a jump-start of the right alternative energy solutions as a bulwark against peak oil... Washington really could benefit from a new emphasis on intelligence and pragmatic real-world experience in policy making as opposed to blatant cronyism... and so on.

Snow Job

Sad to say, my small helping of “hope” has proven to be short-lived – like an asphalt daisy in the path of a steamroller.

Based on the status quo handling of the banking crisis thus far, the overwhelming “business as usual” nature of the stimulus plan, and the clear triumph of the old-school Hacks on the Hill, it looks like the Obama team is getting snowed. Bigtime.

In a scathing critique titled “A 40-Year Wish List,” the Wall Street Journal dissects the pork-laden plan:

We've looked it over, and even we can't quite believe it. There's $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn't turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There's even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.

In selling the plan, President Obama has said this bill will make "dramatic investments to revive our flagging economy." Well, you be the judge. Some $30 billion, or less than 5% of the spending in the bill, is for fixing bridges or other highway projects. There's another $40 billion for broadband and electric grid development, airports and clean water projects that are arguably worthwhile priorities.

The WSJ also offers a handy summary of the proposed “transfer payment increases:”

Not to put too fine a point on it, this stinks.

And “less than 5 percent of the total allocated to fixing bridges or other highway projects?” That doesn’t just stink, it sucks. It sucks like an Electrolux.

I don’t fault the Democrats for being civic-minded. As mentioned with John Thain and the “greedy banker” meme, that would be like faulting a leopard for having spots.

But what do these transfer payment increases actually have to do with stimulus? What could this course of action possibly be construed as other than the fulfillment of a “wish list,” as the WSJ points out? Where are the long-term positive investment impacts from creating much-needed jobs... getting small businesses back on their feet... upgrading the creaking backbone of our nation’s much-frayed transport networks and fossilized energy systems?

Change We Can’t Believe In

Call me naïve for half-expecting good things I suppose.

For those who aren’t yet ready to write Obama off as “just another politician,” I further suppose there’s room for him to turn this snow job around.

Maybe the new administration will be like Microsoft – getting the early versions clunky and wrong, but then pounding away with unlimited time and effort until they get it right.

My fear, though, is that even if team Obama gets their act together down the road – cracking down on the brainless hacks and setting the financial system on a better track – a short-term evaporation of the high expectations that peaked on inauguration day could cause a trap door to open beneath the current market rally. (If it hasn’t already done so, that is.)

Other Related Topics: Barack Obama , Economic Growth , Justice Litle

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