Stimulus Spending that Makes Sense

The Democrats' "stimulus" bill that recently passed was noticeably short on added spending in one area where the extra spending could be effective and not increase deficits over the next five years: military spending, particularly arms procurement.

The military plans to purchase weapons systems over time, so a sensible stimulus plan would have been to accelerate weapons purchases that would occur anyway. This would expand defense contractor' employment today, at the cost of such employment several years from now when presumably the economy is recovering.

Moreover, the spending would be on goods that we were planning to buy anyway, as compared to squandering our tax dollars on politically attractive projects or spending for spending's sake.

There is no stronger evidence of the "stimulus" bill being a vehicle to spend money on Democrats' pet projects, causes, and constituencies than this.