Words matter, so it’s time that Republicans stopped calling this a “stimulus package.” It has nothing to do with stimulating the economy, it’s simply a political payoff to Democrat constituency groups on a scale so massive it’s mind boggling.
This is Chicago politics on steroids. It makes Blagojevich look like a piker (though it’s all perfectly legal, unfortunately).
Democratic bloggers are calling the House Republicans who unanimously voted against this porker “obstructionist” (see here, here, and here). Fine.
Even Keynesians have trouble defending this kind of spending. Billions of dollars for the National Endowment for the Arts, Planned Parenthood and colleges sitting on huge endowments has nothing to do with the economy. Spending on green energy, whether one likes the idea or not, has little to do with getting us out of our present slump. Obama knows this. The Democrats in Congress know it. That’s why they’re trying to rush this through before the American people become aware of the details.
So don’t call it a stimulus package. Call it what it is: Political patronage. A payoff to Democrat pressure groups. A pig in a poke. a Porker of unrivaled dimension. Get that alliterative p-thing going.
If you stand up there in front of the cameras and begin with the words “stimulus package” you’ve already lost half the battle. You then have to spend the rest of your sound bite explaining why the plan you just called an “economic stimulus package” really isn’t what you said it was. Then you have to explain that no, you’re not against stimulating the economy, you’re for it, you really are, really. You realize people are suffering, too. No, you’re not a heartless Republican. Really, you’re aware how bad things are. Yes, we’ve got to do something. You want to help people, too. Really. You’ve just got a different plan. If they’ll just wait you’ll tell them all about it. Hey, where are they going?
And by the way, it’s not an $819 billion or 900 billion or whatever…it’s over a trillion dollars if you count the interest will have to pay. So call it that: a trillion plus plan that will buy nothing but Democrat votes.
Get off defense. Get on offense.
Once you’ve reduced by ridicule the idea that this has anything to do with economic recovery you can quickly begin to develop the narrative, i.e. that it’s the American people who are going to pay for the massive debt with slower growth and inflation – which is a massive tax on the middle class.
This kind of profligate spending can destroy an economy (notice we’ve got the “p-thing” going again). We’ve never seen anything of this magnitude in our lifetimes. This is political patronage on a Latin American scale. If we want to turn ourselves into Argentina, we can do it. But the World Bank isn’t going to bail us out. We basically are the World Bank. There’s not going to be anyone around big enough to forgive our debt…..except maybe the Chinese. And they what are they going to want in return?
