If At First (2nd, 3rd...) You Fail, Do The Same Thing Again

So goes the Democrat mantra. Well, it's never worked before, but they never had a MESSIAH in charge before!

The bill provides a paltry $140 billion for President Obama's "making work pay" tax credit that will be paid out to most taxpayers by lowering the federal income-tax-withholding rate.

Economists who have crunched the numbers tell me that this part of the stimulus bill will put about $10 (for single taxpayers) to $20 (for couples) more in their weekly paychecks over the course of a year.

Few economists think $10 more a week is going to send cash-strapped consumers flocking to the stores on a spending spree, but this is what the Obama administration thinks will help low- to middle-income Americans cope with a fierce recession that's going to get worse before it gets better.

"It has virtually no bang for the buck because it doesn't affect incentives for working, investing and things that actually make the economy go," said economist J.D. Foster at the Heritage Foundation...

A chunk of this money will go into needed safety-net and social-welfare programs for unemployment compensation, healthcare and food stamps. But budget analysts tell me the really big money will go into "a black hole" of government largesse that won't deliver the nearly 4 million jobs Obama says it will.

Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad, the Budget Committee chairman, says at best it may create half that, and even that is questionable.

The Congressional Budget Office issued a stinging data analysis of the spending plan during inauguration week that raised troubling unanswered questions about Obama's retro-New Deal infrastructure-spending scheme. It showed that just a very small fraction of the money being dished out will get into the economy by the end of this year. Less than half will get out by late 2010...

The chairman of the 100-member caucus of GOP conservatives calls Obama's plan "the non-stimulus," like the un-cola, because whenever it has been tried in the past, it has failed to boost economic growth.

One wonders if any White House reporter at the president's next news conference will ask Obama to point to another spending stimulus program that pulled the economy out of a recession. When I have put that question to economists, they can't come up with one example where infrastructure spending has worked...

-Donald Lambro