What is most remarkable about the public debate about the stimulus bill is not the partisan bickering or even the astonishing price tag of the bill’s congressional pet projects. Rather, it is the lack of an open debate among policymakers about what kinds of activity a “stimulus” bill is supposed to, well, stimulate. We are on the verge of committing more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars to “stimulate” the economy with very little explanation by the nation’s political leaders about how the bill will jump-start much of anything. At its current price tag, if the bill were divided equally as cash payments among American households, each family would get approximately $6000. Without a clear idea of what needs “stimulating,” one cannot say why a healthy rebate check for each family is any less of a good idea than spending vast sums on projects whose dubious relationship to economic recovery members of Congress would rather have us ignore.

President Obama has provided more partisanship than leadership on the matter. Despite fulminations against special interests, he has actually defended dubious pork projects in the bill as job-creating innovations in an effort to justify them. At the same time, he encouraged unionization in federal contracts, even though his chief economic advisor, Larry Summers, has said that unionization is a “cause of long-term unemployment.” Obama’s rationale on job creation is as contradictory as his description of tax credits for the middle class as “tax cuts.” The latter allow people to keep their own earnings. The former transfer earnings of some people to other people.