This is how the “Stimulus” bill breaks down. The link to get the larger picture is here.

Note the time line graph at the bottom. While “2012” is flagged as an election year, they failed to show that the next significant election takes place in 2010, when many House and Senate seats will be up for a choice of the voters. As happened with several not so long since past Presidents, the mid-year elections (1994 being a major game changing election year) have taken the control of the Congress to the opposite side of the aisle.

My analysis: Hence the massive amount of money flowing not this year, as people are struggling, but next year, as we are ramping up to a voting season that could actually have a chance of balancing the political powers that be. Note that in order to stimulate the plight of the people, the money goes not to people, but specific functions. How does that specifically address the job situation for the average person? If you are have a skill set in one of those categories of spending type, then I guess you’re set. I actually doubt, since this all has taken place in a matter of weeks, that there was any serious analysis of which particular job markets were affected.

The “crisis” only being a few months long, there can’t be useful data compiled yet to determine these are the best ways to get America back to work. However, it certainly is the best way to throw not bones, but entire slaughtered sides of beef to those who have been in your office, lobbying for their particular “need.” In addition to that dynamic, this bill also does what DC likes to do best: Tell us how to do things in private business/State affairs, not by specific direction, but by attaching money to the mandates. Just like 55MPH. States could ignore it, they just wouldn’t see any Federal funds come their way anymore.

Watch how this $91.3B Health, Labor and Education “bubble” begins to lead us to a national bureau that directs the control/uses of health care, for instance. $79B for State Stabilization Fund will also be a way to manage governors and state legislatures into “compliance.” Heap another 48.9B in Energy and water then $62.3B in Housing, transportation. Between those, DC will pretty much have told us how things will be done. Most of the money in those categories will come to “us” in 2010. November, of course is late in the year, but not so late as to have people recall how their Congressperson “got them” all this help from DC.

Thomas Sowell (an African American economist) told us what was going on in January (29th to be precise) in his editorial. Some “straight talk” is here:

None of this is rocket science. And Washington politicians are not all crazy, even if sometimes it looks that way. Often, what they say makes no sense because what they claim to be doing is not what they are actually doing.

No matter how many times President Barack Obama calls for “swift action,” the kind of economic policies he is promoting take effect slowly.

If the Beltway politicians aren’t really trying to solve this crisis as quickly as they could, what are they trying to do?

One important clue may be a recent statement by President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, that “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”

This is the kind of cynical revelation that sometimes slips out, despite all the political pieties and spin. Crises have long been seen as great opportunities to expand the federal government’s power while the people are too scared to object and before any opposition can get organized.

That is why there is such haste to do things that will take effect slowly.

What are the Beltway politicians buying with all the hundreds of billions of dollars they are spending? They are buying what politicians are most interested in — power.

In the name of protecting the taxpayers’ investment, they are buying the power to tell General Motors how to make cars, banks how to bank and, before it is all over with, all sorts of other people how to do the work they specialize in, and for which members of Congress have no competence, much less expertise.

This administration and Congress are now in a position to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression of the 1930s — use a crisis of the times to create new institutions that will last for generations.

Pardon my cynicism, but isn’t this how we got here? DC telling the economic system how they would do business? Lawyers: They should just stick to being the instigators of acrimony they are, and let business run the economy.

Credit: Washington Post