The Stimulus Package: Prolonging Bad Behavior

If you listen to Barack Obama, the Stimulus Package helped keep teachers, policemen, and fireman in their jobs. But, this was just enabling bad fiscal behavior. That bad behavior was excessive spending by extremely liberal legislatures -- with California, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey leading the pack.

By filling the state's coffers with additional Federal funds to supposedly save these jobs, these states failed to arrive at the hard decisions that are necessary to make them fiscally responsible going forward. So, just like a druggie son who gets cash from his parents to keep enabling his habit, the states will ultimately have to come back to the well to visit their rich uncle -- Uncle Sam -- in order to keep there spending habits going until such time as they really do make the hard choices that are needed to shake them free of their Federal sugar daddy.

In this recession, many households and businesses are going without or with a lot less in order to survive. The state governments should do the same and should learn that -- going forward --- they can't just keep raising taxes and keep spending every tax dollar that comes in the door on new and more expensive programs. The teacher, police, and fire unions need to understand that constantly pressing for higher and higher salaries, earlier retirements, and more and more luxury benefit packages has its consequences when the economy goes sour.

Sadly -- and thanks to Obama's Stimulus Package -- that is a lesson that these states haven't learned. It, too, is a lesson that AIG and some banks should have learned and didn't because of the Federal TARP bailouts. We need to let some entities fail so that they can become leaner and meaner and able to survive any future recessions. There are other ways to handle "too big to fail" without giving handouts. And, that's just my opinion.