We're either in an emergency or we aren't

Being in an economic emergency of terribly grandiose proportions is the reasoning given for spending almost a trillion dollars in a so-called stimulus package. But if the package isn't going to stimulate the economy, what's the point? As James Pethokoukis argues, President Obama needs a do-over in his economic plans. The Wall Street Journal explains why.

The stimulus bill currently steaming through Congress looks like a legislative freight train, but given last week's analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, it is more accurate to think of it as a time machine. That may be the only way to explain how spending on public works in 2011 and beyond will help the economy today.

According to Congressional Budget Office estimates, a mere $26 billion of the House stimulus bill's $355 billion in new spending would actually be spent in the current fiscal year, and just $110 billion would be spent by the end of 2010. This is highly embarrassing given that Congress's justification for passing this bill so urgently is to help the economy right now, if not sooner.

And the red Congressional faces must be very red indeed, because CBO's analysis has since vanished into thin air after having been posted early last week on the Appropriations Committee Web site. Officially, the committee says this is because the estimates have been superseded as the legislation has moved through committee. No doubt.

In addition to suppressing the CBO analysis, Democrats have derided it. Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D., Wis.) called it "off the wall," never mind that CBO is now run by Democrats. Mr. Obey also suggested that it would be a mistake to debate the stimulus "until the cows come home." We'd settle for a month or two, so at least the voters can inspect the various Congressional cattle they're buying with that $355 billion.

I remember when Republicans used to decry CBO scoring of tax cut proposals because the CBO didn't use dynamic scoring and so assumed that no changes in behavior would result from lower or higher taxes. And the Democrats would all get on their high horse and say that we have to respect the wisdom of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Now we're supposed to just ignore what they came up with. And the CBO is going to do a do-over.

As for all of that new spending, CBO will release an updated analysis this week. And we anticipate that the budget analysts will in the interim have discovered that much more of that $355 billion will somehow find its way to "shovel-ready" projects that the Obama Administration can start building before the crocuses bloom. But in the real world, the CBO's first estimate is likely to prove closer to the truth.

The spending portion of the stimulus, in short, isn't really about the economy. It's about promoting long-time Democratic policy goals, such as subsidizing health care for the middle class and promoting alternative energy. The "stimulus" is merely the mother of all political excuses to pack as much of this spending agenda as possible into a single bill when Mr. Obama is at his political zenith.

If the Democrats truly want to stimulate the economy, they shouldn't wait for projects that won't get started for a year or more. And that is what will happen for large construction projects that will have to jump through all the hoops of environmental court challenges and all the other preparation that such projects necessitates. The shovels might be ready, but not all the legal qualifications.

If the government wants to stimulate the economy, they can do it much more efficiently and quickly through tax cuts that aren't temporary infusions of money. As the WSJ writes, temporary handouts to people that they know aren't permanent aren't as likely to spur growth.

The government spending will be a net stimulus only if its $1 goes to more productive purposes than those to which private investors would have put that same $1. There are some ways we may want the government to spend money -- on national defense, say -- but that doesn't mean it's a stimulus.

A similar analysis applies to the tax cuts that are part of President Obama's proposal. In contrast to the spending, at least the tax cuts will take effect immediately. But the problem is that Mr. Obama wants them to be temporary, which means taxpayers realize they will see no permanent increase in their after-tax incomes. Not being fools, Americans may either save or spend the money but they aren't likely to change their behavior in ways that will spur growth. For Exhibit A, consider the failure of last February's tax rebate stimulus, which was a bipartisan production of George W. Bush and Mr. Summers, who is now advising Mr. Obama.

To be genuinely stimulating, tax cuts need to be immediate, permanent and on the "margin," meaning that they apply to the next dollar of income that an individual or business earns. This was the principle behind the Kennedy tax cuts of 1964, as well as the Reagan tax cuts of 1981, which finally took full effect on January 1, 1983.

If the Obama Democrats can't abide this because it's a "tax cut for the rich," as an alternative they could slash the corporate tax to spur business incentives. The revenue cost of eliminating the corporate tax wouldn't be any more than their proposed $355 billion in new spending, and we guarantee its "multiplier" effects on growth would be far greater. Research by Mr. Obama's own White House chief economist, Christina Romer, has shown that every $1 in tax cuts can increase output by as much as $3.

President Obama has said that, regardless of ideology, we should only implement plans that have been shown to work. As George Melloan reminds us, there is little evidence that such a federal spending plan would work more efficiently than private spending.

The new stimulus package pays lip service to aiding the private sector with various tax incentives for hiring and investing capital. It acknowledges, just barely, that the private sector will be the engine for recovery if recovery is to be had. But the record for such measures is about as dismal as the one for short-term supplements to consumer income. They do very little to change the decisions or behavior of the recipient. If the recipient is wary and uncertain about the future, he or she will probably remain so.

Socialist economies, where governments decide how to allocate resources, are notoriously less efficient than market-capitalist economies. As in Washington, every politician demands his share. The late Abram Bergson of Harvard, after prodigious research, concluded that the old Soviet Union -- the ultimate in socialism -- employed capital only about half as efficiently as the U.S. That is one reason the Soviets collapsed from economic exhaustion.

Democrats are putting a lot of faith, to the tune of over $1.5 trillion, in economic policies with dodgy track records. At this time of a new president and great expectations, one hopes the political class will succeed better with massive spending than it has in the past. But don't bet the farm.

Perhaps he could talk to his chief economist about the effects of these proposed plans.