Thomas Sowell has a very thought-provoking column on the stimulus called “What Are They Buying?”
I talked yesterday about how government spending is not the way to stimulate the economy. On top of this, Sowell makes note that “out of $355 billion newly appropriated, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that only $26 billion will be spent this fiscal year and only $110 billion by the end of 2010”
Not all of that $355 billion is for government spending and public works, for sure. But this indicates that, when it does come to the public works projects, most of that spending won’t even happen this year. So even if government spending was a good way to stimulate the economy, the stimulus package would still have this other problem that most of that won’t happen for another year and longer.