A Stimulus Aimed at 2010
With much fanfare last week, Governor Ted Strickland announced a slew of projects being funded with federal stimulus money. Claiming thousands of new jobs would be created, the governor's thoughts surely turned to the ramifications in November 2010. Since there is no evidence that massive government spending stimulates the economy, the only thing this huge outlay will accomplish is to stimulate the political careers of politicians like Governor Strickland.
It's easy to be a governor or legislator when economic times are good. Tax revenue pours in, pet projects and programs are easy to fund, and everyone is happy. Few hard choices need to be made. When revenue dries up during a recession, though, one's true leadership is revealed.
Leadership, ultimately, is about making choices, especially difficult choices. It's about seeing what is good in the long-run and doing that, regardless of the short-term pain that may be caused. Governor Strickland wants to avoid those hard choices, though, and focus on the short-term benefits of higher government spending. Someone else can deal with the long-run problems of huge deficits and unrestrained borrowing.
When there were rumbles in the air of an impending recession in 2007, the governor and legislators could have done the prudent thing: limit spending growth, refrain from creating new programs, and planned for the future. Instead, with only one dissenting vote, the Republican General Assembly sent a big-spending budget to the Democratic governor that, among other things, created a new middle class entitlement to government health care.
Now that the dire economic predictions have come to pass, the governor wants to avoid paying for his bad decisions in 2007. Instead, he became the chief cheerleader for federal "stimulus" spending - a package which only 37% of Americans support. Claiming against all historical evidence that this spending would boost the economy, he helped persuade Congress and President Obama (not that they needed much persuading) to appropriate nearly a trillion dollars in "stimulus" spending.
The notion that this money will help the economy is absurd. If increasing federal spending promotes economic growth, after eight years of irresponsible budgeting by the Bush White House we'd all be millionaires. Japan's heavy government spending during that country's 1990s recession produced nothing but an even more stagnant economy. The German government's spending in what had been East Germany after reunification in the 1990s also harmed -- not helped -- that nation's economy.
While this spending won't assist the economy, it will help Governor Strickland and other politicians around Ohio and the nation. Instead of showing leadership and addressing the state's $7 billion deficit, the governor can use federal money to paper over the harm caused by his bad budgeting. Local officials can do the same while also announcing funding for a slew of new goodies.
It may be nice for officials in Champaign County to receive a handicap-accessible van with federal funding. It certainly makes them happy they are not spending local tax money on it. But is that purchase stimulus? It's hard to see how it is, unless "stimulus" is defined so broadly as to be meaningless. The money pouring into the state is merely more wasteful spending that is the hallmark of the Strickland Administration. The only difference is that it's not coming directly out of the pockets of Ohio taxpayers.
By allowing the governor to use this federal money to mask the budget deficit he and the General Assembly created, the governor makes it much easier to be re-elected in 2010. It's not the proper role of the federal government to help boost governors' re-election chances, though. Unfortunately, until Ohioans stand up against this reckless spending and those who champion it, we'll continue to see this type of travesty taking place.
Marc Kilmer is a policy analyst with the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, a research and educational institute located in Columbus, Ohio.
