A 40-Year Wish List

Congress is poised to pass a 825 billion dollar "stimulus package" to fix the economy. So go read this bit over at WSJ and tell me where the stimulus is? The editorial is titled "A 40-Year Wish List" and that about says it all.

• $2 billion for child-care subsidies
  
• $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
  
• $400 million for global-warming research [Why more research. I thought we already had a consensus?]
  
• $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects
  
• $650 million for digital TV conversion coupons [I've always thought of TV as a luxury. Go buy your own converter box or do without]
  
• $30 billion for fixing bridges or other highway projects.
  
• $40 billion for broadband and electric grid development, airports and clean water projects
  
• $1 billion for Amtrak [Just nationalize it already]
  
• $600 million for the federal government to buy new cars [Drive the ones you got for another year]
  
• $7 billion for modernizing federal buildings and facilities
  
• $81 billion for Medicaid
  
• $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits
  
• $20 billion for food stamps
  
• $83 billion for the earned income credit for people who don't pay income tax
  
• $6 billion to subsidize university building projects
  
• $6 billion to expand broadband Internet access
  
• $16 billion to repair public housing
  
• $6 billion to weatherize modest-income homes
  
• $79 billion in state fiscal relief
  
• $4 billion for state and local law enforcement funding
  
• $20 billion for health information technology
  

I'm sure with 600+ pages of bill this is only a sampling of what's in it. The infrastructure projects will arguably stimulate the economy, but based on the sample pushing a social agenda and paying off political debts are sthe primary intent not stimulus.