The stimulus package currently in congress is set to double spending on special education, and as someone who went to one special education school that was overcrowded to the point they were renting classroom space and another school that could barley pay for new lightbulbs I’m against the stimulus package – heres why.
We have one of the largest defecits right now on the federal goverment in history – and its just going to get worse. The stimulus package is filled so much with pork its not even funny – and this comes from someone who typically leans more towards the left. Pork includes $1.1 to create a brand new Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, over $1Billion for expanding cell phone networks and $2 billion for increasing the reach of broad band Internet.
I have an Iphone 3g – in a town without 3G. I would love to have 3G Internet, but not at this expense. I grew up in an area that still does not have broadband Internet, so I sat for a half an hour to be able to watch the first 5 seconds of youtube videos only to have it need to buffer again. The expense is putting our government further into debt with a stimulus package that is just going to make our economy worse. Our children and our grandchildren will likely have to pay off our current debt – plus the debt were going to get added from the stimulus package.
Special Education Spending
I completely understand how underfunded special education is, and how much reform special education needs. But I can also see the big picture of the economy, the state I live in is getting ready to elimate 10 out of 18 state departments – yes that’s more than half the state departments. People advocating for passing this bill are getting tunnel vision on their pet causes – in the advocacy group this happens to be special education. We really need to look at what benefit doubling the special education budget will have on the economy.
We all know the schools will spend this money as rapidly as they can on anything they can see with a price tag and this money may last 1 school year, 2 at the most. When the schools come back for more funding the government money well will be even more drier then it is now. Funding Special Education will do nothing to help the economy, or the people currently in special education.
The Big Picture
Lets look at the Big Picture, students who are in special education usually tend up living off from welfare programs such as disability and food stamps for a good portion of their lives. This stimulus package is directing the treasury department to spend more money it does not have. Its the equivalent of someone getting a $30,000 loan for a car when there $60,000 in debt. When these students grow into adults there going to be needing money from the welfare system to survive – the only problem is there won’t be any money if we keep using money that does not exist in the first place. Common Sense says you don’t keep spending money when you don’t have it as its just going to create larger problems in the future.
What We Should Do
In my opinion what we should do is be cutting back spending on the personal household levels and the government levels, not spending money that does not exist. We should cut back spending significantly and just ride it out. This is whats called a market correction – what you get when you spend a whole bunch of money on useless crap and the economy does on people buying useless crap. Does this mean its going to be rough for the next few years – yes, but its going to be easier when its over and we have significantly less debt to pay off – or am I drinking to much grape juice?
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Hmm, as it happens, I am listening to Laura Ingraham rant about this on the radio at this very moment. I recommend you look at Jerry Pournelle’s site, particularly the entries for the last two weeks or so. He seems willing to put up with a smaller thing, which would just buy up the bad mortgages and maybe rent the houses to people at low rents until things recover. He discusses the disadvantages of that and concludes they amount to a lesser evil than this huge grocery-list of a bill with special goodies for every Democrat special interest, and some Republican ones too