Time for a second ‘stimulus’?

This country's businesses, consumers and workers are desperately fighting the Dumpster fire that has engulfed the shredded American economy. They'd spit on the flames if they could get close enough.

President Obama and some congressional Democrats, meanwhile, are itching to throw another vat of cooking grease onto the blaze. They'd call the resulting explosion "the second stimulus."

Their first "stimulus" bill, a $787 billion sop to public employees, the welfare state, liberal special interests and Keynesian economists, did exactly what its critics predicted: provide no immediate boost while burdening future generations with even larger payments on the national debt.

The legislation was lard and porkfat from the beginning, with the president, vice president and their economic team throwing out all sorts of made-up numbers and predictions to justify its passage. First, it would create 3.5 million jobs while keeping the unemployment rate from rising beyond 8.1 percent. Then, it would create or save 3 million jobs.

Unemployment is now at 9.5 percent and climbing, and we've lost about 1 million more jobs than the president warned would disappear if Congress failed to pass the bill.

Vice President Joe Biden offered the lame excuse this week that the administration "misread how bad the economy was." That comment brought the customary incorrect correction from the president, who said he didn't misread the economy -- he merely had incomplete information. Never mind that when the administration was pressing lawmakers to act this winter, officials knew the gross domestic product had dropped 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 and that economists of all stripes -- even those Keynesians -- were in agreement that the worst was yet to come.

The idea that government spending can create a tide that lifts all boats is a fraud. Yes, in the short term some specifically directed public funding can help jump start economic activity. But ultimately, government must either seize its revenue from businesses and individuals or borrow on the promise of seizing even more money in the future.

So now the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reports that only a tenth of the first stimulus has been spent, and that 15 months from now, fully half of the appropriations will remain unspent. The "shovel-ready" infrastructure improvements that were the primary selling point of the bill were smoke screens for state bailouts and expanded social services.

And now the big spenders who dreamed up this boondoggle are saying we're still in the tank because the stimulus wasn't big enough. "I think we need to be open to whether we need additional action," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said this week.

Lovely. A lumbering government that couldn't get out of the way of a tortoise stampede might set aside more debt-financed money that it won't spend in the name of saving jobs?

"It's mind-boggling. A second stimulus is an even worse idea than the first," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Exactly. Thankfully, the Senate seems inclined to slam the brakes on this abomination.

The senators could do one better by taking back the first one.