my generational debt? my priorities!

Last week I called attention to a couple of items that had been cut from the House stimulus package by the so-called “gang” of Senate moderates. The list included $5.8 billion for health prevention activity, $1 billion Head Start/Early Start programs, and $2 billion for increasing access to broadband internet. I’m not sure if they made it back into the final stimulus package – I am pretty sure they didn’t – but either way the point I want to make it still relevant: Our generation and our children will be paying for the stimulus package and forthcoming bank bailouts, which makes it all the more important that the bill has some degree of mid-to-long term sense. I appreciate that this will be an expensive enterprise – through probably not the $2.3 trillion plus debt members of the Republican caucus keep citing – and I think that’s a great reason to load it with more than just immediate forms of relief like the AMT fix or added unemployment benefits but also to take advantage of this opportunity and take a big step toward restoring America’s long term competitiveness.

My ideological convinction that investments should also balance longer-term priorities is all the more reason that it’s driving me crazy that Republicans, starting with Michelle Malkin, have been calling the stimulus package The Generational Theft Act of 2009. Think Progress catalogues some of the claim’s recent appearances:

Malkin’s views are apparently beginning to hold sway with Republicans in Congress. On January 29, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) said of the proposed stimulus package, “This bill is a generational theft bill.” In a blog post yesterday for AmericaSpeakOn.org, a new conservative 501(c)4 group, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) used Malkin’s language as well:

The hundreds of billions of dollars Washington is borrowing to finance this pork-barrel monstrosity will come from our children and grandchildren.This is not “stimulus” – it’s generational theft.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has become a top critic of the recovery package in the Senate, also referred to it as “generational theft” on CBS’ Face The Nation.

WAIT. HOLD UP. The same Congressional Republicans complaining about a stimulus package that costs less than the Bush administration’s $2 trillion in tax cuts or the over $1 trillion spent in Iraq are just now talking about “generational theft?” These same folks who are gutting the sensible long-term priorities within the bill – that which they’ve described as “Democratic pet projects” – are complaining about the debt that they’re not inheriting? If this is my generational debt, a claim I could work with considering it's going to be my debt, that's a good reason for it not to be loaded with the same bad policies of the last eight years. 

I agree with Krugman’s assessment that this talk is “deranged.” (Krugman himself is advocating for an even bigger bill and thinks the administration is merely “kicking the can down the road.”) Ron Brownstein is on MtP is also ripping into this, asking what credibility Republicans have to claim the upper hand on fiscal stewardship. Watch it here.

As usual, Michael Connery at Future Majority beat me to the punch.

The facts of the matter are simple. We're facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the question on the minds of most economists isn't "how big will the deficits be," rather, it's "will the stimulus be big enough to plug the gaping holes in our economy." The economic recovery package isn't $800 billion in pork or wasteful spending, rather it is a stop-gap to save jobs, and a mid- to long-term investment in the future our citizens, our infrastructure, and our economy.

In its final form, the stimulus package will:

•   Modernize more than 75% of federal buildings and improve the energy efficiency of 2 million American homes, saving consumers and taxpayers billions on our energy bills. The plan will also double American renewable energy-generating capacity over three years.
  
•   Make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that within five years, all of America’s medical records are computerized, reducing medical errors and saving billions in health care costs.
  
• Equip thousands of schools, community colleges, and public universities with 21st century classrooms, labs, and libraries.
  
• Expand broadband across America, so that a small business in a rural town can connect and compete with their counterparts anywhere in the world.
  
• Enact the largest investment in America’s crumbling roads, bridges and transit systems since the creation of the national highway system.
  
• Invest in high risk-high reward science-based research and innovation, and bring it to market—to invent the technology the world uses, and prevent and cure deadly and costly diseases.
  

As Connery is noting, the stimulus package contains long-term provisions. Brownstein, again, reports in the NJ this weekend that Obama Focuses On Ends, Flexible On Means. What I am implying here is that these provisions are what a stimulus package that isn’t generational theft should look like, one that invests not only for the short-term (job creation vis a vis infrastructure projects) but in the long term (in sectors like weatherization and green building).

If anyone has called attention to this concept, it’s been Nick Kristof. In this On the Ground blog entry from two-ish weeks ago, Kristof began hammering the idea that the best part of the stimulus package were its investments in education. His column this weekend, too, address this is issue. As he notes, the bill invests $100 billion in education. When the Dept of Ed’s annual budget is merely $59 billion, this is obviously a really big deal. And to me, this suggests a stimulus package with some forward thinking. 

FINAL NOTE: Yes, I am in Argentina. I arrived this morning. But after a little suitcase mishap yesterday afternoon, I didn’t get a chance to finish this yesterday so it took first prioritiy. As for Argentina: I took a two hour nap and could probably fall asleep right now.