U.S. Passes Bad Paper Instead of Seeking Credit Counseling

If Republican MBA captains of industry are supposedly smarter than the average bear, a recent AP-Ipsos poll asking average Americans the way out of recession proves that average Republicans, as a pack, may not be the brightest bulbs in the socket. Only 18 percent of them believed that pulling out of Iraq, where the nation has spent, is spending, or has lost track of untold billions of public tax dollars, would staunch the financial bloodletting of American treasure and help our economy "a lot." Sixty-five percent of Democrats think ending the war will help.

Nineteen percent of overall respondents from both parties indicated they wouldn't even spend the money when the rubber checks begin arriving in May of this year. Forty-five percent said they’d use the money to pay bills. Congress and the president, clearly unaware of how the other half lives, do not seem to comprehend that average Americans were already long behind the eight ball on fuel, medicine, food, and mortgages when Washington concocted this fuzzy stimulus plan.

Granted, no high-falutin' economist is authoring this blog post, but isn't it a law of the universe--like gravity--that debt on top of debt only equals more debt? With rutted roads, rusty bridges, sub-standard schools, and cash-strapped state, county, and municipal governments staring our nation's citizens in the face daily, is it any wonder 43 percent said increasing government spending on health care, education and housing programs would help a great deal? Sixty-eight percent overall felt the money would be better spent at home.

Perhaps instituting jobs geared at solving this nation's burgeoning list of problems or funneling more money to local projects would contribute exponentially to the economy by creating and keeping steady jobs in the public sector. People are more likely to spend money regularly if they know they can count on having more of it next month.

Could there be a better investment of borrowed government funds than piling further debt onto national bankruptcy in order to dazzle citizens, who in fact will barely notice the refunds as a blip on their budgetary radars? Give a man a fish, he eats for one meal. Build a pond and hire the guy to open a fish farm, he'll eat forever and so will his community. Three-, six-, or twelve-hundred dollars doesn't keep someone who cannot support himself regularly off the streets for more than about 30 minutes at today's prices.

No doubt a CAT-scan peek into the collective brain power of Washington would reveal little, if any, activity occuring on a neurocellular level. When the citizenry, who is used to living within the constraints of budgetary and checkbook balances, displays more common sense regarding economic disaster aversion than the so-called finest economic minds, Houston: there is a big, BIG problem with America's leadership.

With the exception of those Republicans, the ones who clearly never tire of building someone else's nation at our expense (unless one day they notice their own surroundings have come to resemble a scene from The Day After), the AP-Ipsos poll demonstrates Americans are aware the place is lookin' a might shabby lately. Generally it doesn't seem they mind borrowing a bit to fix it up. But this stimulus package, the handing out of rubber government, one-use checks, will not result in any long-term or permanent improvements for America or Americans or stem the tide of an ever-increasing and exhorbitant debt that is dragging America rapidly backward.

Frankly, this brand of stimulus rather more resembles borrowing a dollar from a predatory uncle to help the homeless camped in the Wal-Mart parking lot. It doesn't change a thing for the homeless, and now you owe the uncle.