How to Waste $787 Billion Dollars

The New York Times has more on the ineffectiveness of the $787 billion dollar stimulus package to stimulate much of anything except either government employment or temporary jobs.

When Congress approved the $787 billion federal stimulus package this year, Mr. Reed hoped it would help hard-pressed cities like his. But so far he has been underwhelmed.

In Washington last month, Mr. Reed delivered his message to White House economists and an audience at the Brookings Institution: the design and implementation of the stimulus package could not have been worse for Silicon Valley. The money it doles out in the short run has arrived in a trickle, too slow to do much. And for the long run, it does little to help generate permanent jobs.

“We have only received and spent six or seven million dollars,” Mr. Reed said in an interview last week. “You can’t expect a very big impact out of that.”

Ah, but there’s more. Here’s what that $6 or $7 million bought.

Officially, the audits say, 250 full-time equivalent jobs have been created. But 240 of those positions reflect 900 part-time summer jobs that were created for area youths. Since those were summer jobs and winter is nearly here, the jobs are already gone. The other 10 full-time equivalent jobs were part of an airport project to improve the screening of checked baggage. The city has spent $3.3 million of its own money on that project and has yet to see a dime of the promised reimbursement.

I am not predicting that the economy will not recover, or we won’t start having job growth at some point. I think the American economy is so resilient, it can recover in spite of almost anything Washington DC can throw at it.

But I can think of almost 787 billion other things to have done with this money.