NRO: The European Social Welfare State Bill

So, if this is a "normal" length recession, the spending bill will have the classic problem that fiscal stimulus does--namely, it comes too late to do much good, but right on time to help stoke inflation and mis-allocation of resources that are suddenly in high demand as the economy enters a recovery. And if this is a very long-lasting recession, more like a U.S. 1930s Depression or Japan 1990s "lost decade", then the problem is so long-lasting that we're not really debating a stimulus bill, we're debating a near-permanent shift of control of resources to the government, which doesn't exactly have a sterling track record of success. Only if this is a "Goldilocks-length" recession of more than 1-2 years, but less than a decade (which is a pretty hard beast to find in modern American history) would this temporal spending pattern turn out to be wise.

...The huge categories of spending under this bill that I could map to categories other than "General Spending" are in Social Protection (~$90 billion), Education (~$90 billion) and Environment (~$55 billion). Interestingly, Defense represents only about 3% of the spending in the bill (as opposed to 12% of U.S. government spending overall, or about 3% of French overall government spending as a point of comparison) and Public Safety represents only about 1% of spending in the bill (as opposed to about 6% of U.S. government spending overall, or about 2% of French government spending overall). In other words, the net effect of this bill is to shift the distribution of U.S. government spending as a whole away from defense and public safety and toward social programs: for good or ill, to make the U.S. into more of a European-style social welfare state. Because the amount of spending is so huge, this will be a material, not notional, shift. Eventually, we will emerge from this recession/depression/whatever it's going to be. When that happens, is this really the kind of government we're going to want?

I know, I'm ringing the gong again. But this bill is a Trojan Horse for the expanded nanny-state. And that is where I have the biggest issue with Obama. The foreign policy thing has a way of figuring itself out. If you look at every presidential race since Truman-Ike you see that the challenger that won ran with a policy puppy dogs and lollipops. Ike thought Truman was inexperienced in foreign affairs and then had the Korean War grind to a stalemate. JFK though he could do better and started Vietnam. Nixon had the secret answer to ending Vietnam but decided to wait five years to reveal it. Carter sold us on the tragedies of the Cold War and then had to boycott the US Olympics due to the USSR's aggressions. Clinton bombed Serbians, Somalians, Iraqis and Afghans without consulting Congress of the UN; and then we have George Bush who ran with a policy against Nation-Building. Obama ran on withdrawal in Iraq and since then has come back to reality.

What scares the shit out of me is the galactic shift in domestic policy that is being proposed by the Dem's in the name of doing something. Sure, it started with Bush and the initial bailout. That does not mean it has to continue with Obama Administration. And as for immediacy, know that the economy was in the shitter when Reagan took office and it took him nine months to pass him budget. Today's version will spend $900 Billion in nine days. Awesome.