Rush, rush, rush, spend, spend, spend, accomplish this thing. Undo years of work leading to successful welfare reform, jeopardize the future, claim there was no other choice. And then let President Barack Obama take off for a three-day vacation before affixing his signature to the document.
That document, of course, would be the stimulus package that just had to be done in such a hurry that there would be no time for anyone to learn what it contained, despite Obama’s promises of “transparency.”
Without blurring speed, we were told by the later lollygagging president, there would be a “catastrophe,” and, he intoned, the Republicans were offering up no alternatives. They were, of course. How could he have gotten that wrong?
Now that the legislative deed is done, we are beginning to learn what was crammed into this mansion of horrors, such as a provision in a far backroom in effect telling states they can go back to their bad old ways of increasing welfare rolls without penalty.
You might say, well sure, we are in a recession throwing people out of jobs, but emergency provisions could have provided increased welfare when increased unemployment made that necessary, analysts have pointed out.
This provision takes us back to when families would camp under the welfare tent from generation to generation, a system debilitating for them and expensive for the public.
When President Clinton signed welfare reform into law as maybe the foremost achievement of his two terms in office, critics claimed a million children would be thrown into poverty. No such thing occurred. Would-be welfare mothers got jobs. The lives of many former recipients improved. The reform worked.
Robert Rector and Katherine Bradley of The Heritage Foundation point to still other welfare enhancements in the bill, argue that the reform reversal and other changes will likely stay in place permanently despite pledges to the contrary and estimate the cost of this sneak attack will be will be something on the order of $800 billion over the next 10 years. That comes to $10,000 for each family paying income tax, they note.
This is no small deal. This renewed entitlement spending comes on top of old entitlement spending that has unfunded liabilities of some $40 trillion, enough in itself to sink this ship of state if something is not done.
The provision is part of a $787 billion bill that comes on top of what would have been a record-breaking deficit even if it had not passed. The government will spend additional billions, maybe even trillions, to rescue banks this year.
We already have a major debt even forgetting what’s owed Social Security and Medicare. And yet the new spending is still necessary, some assure us.
Some economists disagree, telling us that the spending prescription for economic recovery is exactly wrong, that we should have lowered spending while cutting taxes far more than this bill did and that grave problems could now confront us, including a possible assault on our prosperity for many years to come.
There are battles yet to fight, and the hope has to be that the congressional Republicans will fight them, avoiding the scare tactics that Obama has disgracefully employed to the economy’s disadvantage and dismissing one intellectually unforgiveable criticism.
It is that the Republicans themselves once overspent and are therefore hypocritical not to do it in grotesque amounts now, as if mistakes in the past should compel you to compound them in the future, as if driving recklessly once means you should do it daily.
When liberals use these kinds of arguments, you have to figure they have nothing rational left in their quiver.
Examiner columnist Jay Ambrose is a former Washington opinion writer and editor of two dailies. He can be reached at: [email protected].
