Pushing through a giant healthcare package the majority of Americans didn’t want is one thing, but wasting a once in multiple generations chance at crafting a great stimulus package is as bad or worse.  Think about this.  Barack Obama had all the political capital needed to spend nearly a trillion dollars on a stimulus.  For that money, did we get a new Tennessee Valley Authority, a new power grid, a series of new nuclear power plants, a change in transportation infrastructure as radical and impressive as the interstate highway system?

No.

We didn’t get any of that from the largest short term spending package in American history.

Instead, what we got was a huge, unwieldy set of pork barrel projects with no coherent theme to hold it together.  It reminds me of the old Super Bowl Commercial where the crowd of monkeys celebrate blowing several million dollars in a nearly meaningless brand endorsement.

The White House must be held accountable for this error.  Every Republican candidate should be harping on just how unconscionable the stimulus was.

Keynes famously noted that the government could stimulate the economy by dropping money out of helicopters.

Our president and his liberal Congress seem very nearly to have taken the idea to heart.