Hopeless Complexity

On Tuesday, February 17, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as “the stimulus bill” became the law of the land when President Obama affixed his signature to it. I surmise that few of us know much about the bill, beyond the fact that our government is about to spend 787 billion dollars it doesn’t have to create or save up to four million jobs. Doing the math, that amounts to a cost of $196,750 per job created. Assuming that these are not going to be jobs for CEO’s, the actual salaries paid will, of course, be far less than that. Of course, money will be spent on materials and other costs associated with job creation, but even accounting for that, it is clear that some “extras” were thrown into this bill. “The devil is in the details” has never been so true, and those details are too numerous and complicated for the average person to understand.

I suspect the bill is too complicated even for the Congressmen who passed it. After all, the final version comes in at 1,071 pages! The people who voted on it didn’t have time to read it even if they wanted to, and if they had, they still wouldn’t know what they were doing. Of course, we can read the bill for ourselves. In the interest of transparency, the White House has placed the full context of the bill on the Internet. I have included an actual excerpt here. Since we live in a rural area where agriculture is important to the lives of many, I chose part of Section 102, the Agricultural Disaster Assistance Transition. Please read carefully.

SEC. 102. AGRICULTURAL DISASTER ASSISTANCE TRANSITION. (a)
FEDERAL CROP INSURANCE ACT. Section 531(g) of the Federal Crop
Insurance Act (7 U.S.C. 1531(g)) is amended by adding at the
end the following:
‘‘(7) 2008 TRANSITION ASSISTANCE.—
‘‘(A) IN GENERAL.—Eligible producers on a farm
described in subparagraph (A) of paragraph (4) that failed
to timely pay the appropriate fee described in that subparagraph
shall be eligible for assistance under this section in accordance with
subparagraph (B) if the eligible producers on the farm—
‘‘(i) pay the appropriate fee described in paragraph
(4)(A) not later than 90 days after the date of enactment
of this paragraph; and
‘‘(ii)(I) in the case of each insurable commodity
of the eligible producers on the farm, excluding grazing
land, agree to obtain a policy or plan of insurance
under subtitle A (excluding a crop insurance pilot program
under that subtitle) for the next insurance year
for which crop insurance is available to the eligible
producers on the farm at a level of coverage equal
to 70 percent or more of the recorded or appraised
average yield indemnified at 100 percent of the
expected market price, or an equivalent coverage; and
‘‘(II) in the case of each noninsurable commodity
of the eligible producers on the farm, agree to file
the required paperwork, and pay the administrative
fee by the applicable State filing deadline, for the noninsured
crop assistance program for the next year for which a policy is available.

There! How’s that for transparency? I would explain it, but I would first need to assemble a team of lawyers, economists, politicians, and academics to explain it to me. Of course, they wouldn’t agree on its meaning, and I wouldn’t trust any of them to tell me the truth anyway. Therein lies the problem with government – it has become too big and complicated for any of us to understand. How can we have a government by the people when the people don’t have a clue what is going on? Of course, that would not be such a terrible problem if we could trust our elected representatives to make wise decisions for us – a laughable proposition at best. After all, we are talking about a legislative body that couldn’t pass a budget, one of their most important functions, or address the energy crisis when Americans were being squeezed for $4 a gallon gasoline. Now these same people are supposed to fix the greatest economic crisis of our lifetimes, when their policies and lack of oversight helped get us into this mess in the first place. Forgive me if I am not optimistic.

As for the Democrats in Congress, it is Christmas in D.C. They see this bill as the opportunity to include every social program they have lusted after in the past twelve years of Republican control. Never mind that our government is already 11 trillion dollars in debt. We’ll just print more money or pass additional debt on to our grandchildren. What could be the harm in that??? Well, as they say, a trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money.

I see the problems, but alas, I have no answers. The scary thing is, I’m not sure anyone does. Obama seems to be throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks, much like FDR did during the Depression. Many economists believe that none of those New Deal programs brought us out of the Depression anyway; WWII did that. After all, if you conscript the entire population of young men and send them off to war, that pretty much solves your unemployment problem. I don’t think any of us would like to solve our current problems with WWIII.

If this is beyond the scope of mortal men to fix, I have one suggestion: PRAY without ceasing!