Crack is a stimulus too

Apparently the Senate will pass the $827 billion stimulus bill on Tuesday. Since the House passed a different version, the leadership of both houses will convene a conference to hash out the differences, and then both houses will pass that revised version and send it to Mr. Obama.

Let's do some addition: Mr. Bush got a $700 billion bailout bill late last calendar year (but rolled up into Fiscal Year 2009) and now Mr. Obama will get another $827 billion for a total of $1,527 billion (that's 1.527 trillion dollars!). All of this is (or will be) borrowed money; in addition, Mr. Bush's final fiscal crime in office (so far as we know) was to submit a budget with a projected deficit of $482 billion, all of which is also borrowed money. So we're now at $2,009 billion (that's 2.009 trillion dollars!). For all you history buffs, the entire federal budget for 2001 equalled this sum. Since that Fiscal Year 2009 deficit was computed with lots of rosy hopes for economic growth that have been utterly invalidated by the crash-cum-depression, we can reasonably expect it to exceed the original estimate by scores--even hundreds--of billions of dollars. In addition, the costs of our ruinous wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, and Iran are "off budget," meaning that these costs are tallied on a different set of books; the costs will be hundreds of billions, every penny of which will be borrowed. So we're really looking at borrowing $2.5 trillion or more in this fiscal year alone.

Mr. Obama hopes that foreigners will loan America this colossal amount cuz we Americans ain't got squat to spend on anything. Does he know foreigners we don't know? Does he know foreigners who aren't themselves caught in the crash-cum-depression and who are not trying to conserve every penny they've got? Does he know of foreign governments that are just wallowing in cash and have nothing to spend it on? Whom does Mr. Obama know with this kind of money? Do these people have names? Where are they?

But this is the plan--the only plan--to save America. When it goes bust, we do too.