Democratic stimulus

Say what you want about the Bush economic stimulus package, for the most part it at least centered on letting people keep more of what they earned in the first place so they could spend it as they pleased.

Will we be able to say the same about a future Democratic stimulus package? We're not optimstic.

On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hammered away at the president for the nation's struggling economy and revealed that Democrats have a number of additional "stimulus" measures in the works.

One of the plans involves -- for obvious political reasons -- attaching an unemployment benefits extension to a bill funding the Iraq war. Speaker Pelosi said she and House leaders are currently negotiating with the president on the issue.

But if he won't sign such legislation, "that would be in a second stimulus package," she said.

And what might that include?

Energy assistance for low-income families and other provisions, Bloomberg News reports.

So Speaker Pelosi's idea of stimulating the faltering economy includes more unemployment checks and handing out subsidies to help people in less-afluent households pay their electric bills.

In other words, more redistributionism and welfare.

What next, attacking high gasoline prices by imposing punitive new taxes on the industry and limiting our ability to develop domestic oil sources?

Oops.

Perhaps the "other provisions" to which Speaker Pelosi refers will include measures -- tax cuts and regulatory reform -- that might actually spur private-sector economic investment and create jobs.

But we doubt it.