Editorial Opinion

Republicans need to win or confront Dems on stimulus by Bob Hoig, Publisher Midlands Business Journal Help us on this. How do Nebraskans win by sending tax dollars to Washington, where a commission of 25 percent or more is extracted for bureaucratic services rendered, and then shipped back as entitlements, earmarks, stimuli and the like? The more money that goes out of the state, the less that remains in local economies to be spent by citizens in their own interests – for education, savings, or in the malls with clothiers, grocers, restaurants, service station operators, dry cleaners, banks. Even Omaha’s own financial oracle, Warren Buffett, a major Obama backer, doesn’t hide his estimated $50 billion wealth under mattresses. He invests it directly in profit-making businesses or in financial institutions, which also fund job creation and growth. Money that Buffett sends to Washington for purposes other than national security and limited federal responsibilities is no better spent than ours. Sending money to Washington simply means politicians and bureaucrats decide our priorities. Locally, an example of what Nebraskans got for federal tax dollars was the $20 million, so-called “Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge” across the Missouri River. It is an eye catching structure, but one which likely would not have gotten approval from many Omahans had their own money been directly involved. A dollar goes to Washington. Seventy-five cents or less comes back, in this case because log-rolling senators wanted to give their colleague, Senator Kerrey, what was described in 2000 as their “gift” to him. Our gift, yes. Their gift, no. What the people of Nebraska never got was a choice among ideas for other projects. Nor did they have the chance not to spend anything. Somehow voters have bowed their heads to this notion of letting politicians trade favors and votes in their name – a surefire way to raise campaign contributions but lousy public policy. The bridge is a microcosm of what the current $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion Obama-Democrat stimulus package is in macrocosm. Politicians get to punt issues they should be solving into the future. It did not work for Franklin D. Roosevelt in the depressed 1930s or with Japan in a similar credit-debt situation in the 1990s. But it is being rushed through now with little debate and no apparent inclination by President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi & Co. to incorporate conservative ideas. As we go to press Wednesday, House Republicans have offered proposals to carve away huge earmarks from the stimulus and focus entirely on job creation now. The worst of the special interest earmarks we hope to see cut are outlined by fellow writers in following pages, notably columns by Michelle Malkin, Walter Williams and Jay Ambrose. More objectionable than any one bill is that Obama and the Democrats are steamrolling the United States towards a system indistinguishable from Socialism, which has never worked, lacking as it does free enterprise’s twin pillars of individual incentive and personal responsibility. The GOP needs to force congressional Democrats and President Obama to make the pending bill a real stimulus package and not a pork panacea for all comers. If Republicans cannot win that fight, they should vote “no” to a man and woman. This is a political and economic house of cards posing as a jobs creation bill. Laden with pork and minus a tight jobs creation focus, it augurs debt, very high taxes and curtailed social benefits far into the future. Unanimous opposition at least lets the GOP make a record as the party did in 1993. By refusing to be complicit in then-President Bill Clinton’s giant spending proposals, the Republicans set up their 1994 recapture of the House of Representatives to GOP control after 40 years in the wilderness. January 2009

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