It's More Than Just The Money
By: Doug Busselman, Executive Vice President
I'm not even going to pretend that I completely understand all the details related to the federal stimulus package that's front and center in most conversations right now. As I get around I pick up bits and pieces with this Washington D.C. insider talking about some of the things that they know and this media account reporting on something from a different part. Actually, I'm probably like most people in this regard. It's highly unlikely that many ordinary people can know enough about the exact details about this large of a Christmas tree to grasp everything that's hanging in the form of ornaments from every imaginable (and some un-imaginable) branches.
When I first started hearing about how this proposal was going to work, I got the impression that there was a plan to use federal dollars (which I also understood can only be federal dollars when taxpayers send their money to Washington, D.C. to become federal dollars) in a strategic way. Like a carefully crafted and insightful plan, President Obama and his fellow leaders in the U.S. Congress were going to invest these federal dollars into needed avenues that accomplished worthwhile activities and put out-of-work Americans back to work carrying out the activities. Images of FDR and infrastructure projects with smiling, self-fulfilled young people working to implement the grand plans played in the back of my head like a movie from elementary school.
Then I started picking up signals on how the federal stimulus package was going to help Nevada with our ailing state budget. Instead of having to make draconian cutbacks to state government employees' paychecks and educational funding, huge piles of dollars from Washington, D.C. were going to flow into the state's checking account to allow greater amounts of state spending without Nevada taxpayers having to send more of their money to Carson City.
Somewhere in all of this I also got background information from Farm Bureau contacts in Washington, D.C. that we were in support of several things in the stimulus bill. There were tax credits that would benefit farmers and ranchers as well as other business entities and various rural economic development projects including help to bring broadband internet linkages to the countryside, from sea to shining sea.
I don't know when it started to feel funny (I think it had something to do with the Nevada Democratic Leaders and their announcement of how they were going to turn our state's misery around by using the federal stimulus money to create green energy training centers) but, I'm starting to figure out that there might not be any real reasoning behind any of this. It seems that every hair-brained scheme that was ever schemed might have got taken off the shelf, dusted off and put into this fast-moving train.
There's probably some good in the bill and it's very possible that necessary funds will find their way to worthwhile projects and activities, but you can't help but think that in the long-run a whole bunch of something is going to seem really weird when we find out all the details. News reports on the House bill highlighted a few of these things, including money put in to provide dollars for sexually transmitted disease education...okay, I guess there's probably some kind of logical conclusion on how that's going to get our American economy back on its feet, but?
This Is Going To Have A Tail:
Another nagging feeling on how we're going to spend a whole lot of money on things we don't need, is that once we start spending it, we're going to have a system in place to spend more money on what we don't need for a long time to come.
When government sets things up as something new...old things don't ever go away and the new things keep needing money too.
Instead of a bail-out we might just be looking at a deeper hole.
I'm not even going to pretend that I completely understand all the details related to the federal stimulus package that's front and center in most conversations right now. As I get around I pick up bits and pieces with this Washington D.C. insider talking about some of the things that they know and this media account reporting on something from a different part. Actually, I'm probably like most people in this regard. It's highly unlikely that many ordinary people can know enough about the exact details about this large of a Christmas tree to grasp everything that's hanging in the form of ornaments from every imaginable (and some un-imaginable) branches.
When I first started hearing about how this proposal was going to work, I got the impression that there was a plan to use federal dollars (which I also understood can only be federal dollars when taxpayers send their money to Washington, D.C. to become federal dollars) in a strategic way. Like a carefully crafted and insightful plan, President Obama and his fellow leaders in the U.S. Congress were going to invest these federal dollars into needed avenues that accomplished worthwhile activities and put out-of-work Americans back to work carrying out the activities. Images of FDR and infrastructure projects with smiling, self-fulfilled young people working to implement the grand plans played in the back of my head like a movie from elementary school.
Then I started picking up signals on how the federal stimulus package was going to help Nevada with our ailing state budget. Instead of having to make draconian cutbacks to state government employees' paychecks and educational funding, huge piles of dollars from Washington, D.C. were going to flow into the state's checking account to allow greater amounts of state spending without Nevada taxpayers having to send more of their money to Carson City.
Somewhere in all of this I also got background information from Farm Bureau contacts in Washington, D.C. that we were in support of several things in the stimulus bill. There were tax credits that would benefit farmers and ranchers as well as other business entities and various rural economic development projects including help to bring broadband internet linkages to the countryside, from sea to shining sea.
I don't know when it started to feel funny (I think it had something to do with the Nevada Democratic Leaders and their announcement of how they were going to turn our state's misery around by using the federal stimulus money to create green energy training centers) but, I'm starting to figure out that there might not be any real reasoning behind any of this. It seems that every hair-brained scheme that was ever schemed might have got taken off the shelf, dusted off and put into this fast-moving train.
There's probably some good in the bill and it's very possible that necessary funds will find their way to worthwhile projects and activities, but you can't help but think that in the long-run a whole bunch of something is going to seem really weird when we find out all the details. News reports on the House bill highlighted a few of these things, including money put in to provide dollars for sexually transmitted disease education...okay, I guess there's probably some kind of logical conclusion on how that's going to get our American economy back on its feet, but?
This Is Going To Have A Tail:
Another nagging feeling on how we're going to spend a whole lot of money on things we don't need, is that once we start spending it, we're going to have a system in place to spend more money on what we don't need for a long time to come.
When government sets things up as something new...old things don't ever go away and the new things keep needing money too.
Instead of a bail-out we might just be looking at a deeper hole.
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