S.O.S. SAVE OUR STIMULUS

President Obama is right.

It would be a "catastrophe" if we don't pass a stimulus bill - but it would be a much, much bigger catastrophe if he allows THIS piece-of-junk stimulus bill to pass.

Tens of billions of dollars in new spending for federal government buildings. More than $300 billion in new spending for already-bloated government entitlement behemoths like Medicaid.

That's not a stimulus bill for the American people - that's a stimulus bill for the American government.

This was supposed to be a rescue package for us - for the almost 800,000 people thrown out of manufacturing jobs since December 2007, for the 7,000 cut from Home Depot last week, for the 1,000 people who camped out over the weekend in Miami to apply for one of 35 firefighting jobs.

We need help now - not in 2010 (when $356 billion will be spent), not in 2011 and after (when $293 billion will be spent). If more than 60 percent of the spending comes well over a year from now, that's not stimulating - that's just teasing us.

Opinion polls show support for the stimulus bill is tanking because the American people know a duck when they see it - and this sucker is quacking so loud right now, it might bring down a US Airways flight.

If the Democratic Congress and the Democratic president want to spend $4 billion on stop-smoking programs and anti-obesity campaigns, then create a bill to do it, debate it, pass it and sign it. But don't do it in our stimulus bill.

Frankly, it's insulting.

Is it worth spending $6 billion to make federal buildings more green? Maybe - but what in God's name does that have to do with saving our economic bacon?

Nothing - it has to do with furthering the social goals that Obama outlined in his campaign.

And he admitted as much in an editorial in The Washington Post yesterday, writing, "Now is the time to save billions by making 2 million homes and 75 percent of federal buildings more energy-efficient, and to double our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy within three years."

Actually, no. The time to do that is after everybody has a job and enough to eat.

"Now is the time to give our children every advantage they need to compete by upgrading 10,000 schools with state-of-the-art classrooms, libraries and labs; by training our teachers in math and science . . ."

Sorry, we were too busy laughing at the idea of more teacher-training programs as "stimulus" to point out that education was one of the few industries last year that actually added jobs.

Does the National Institute of Standards need the extra $357 million it gets in the "stimulus" bill? Its entire budget last year was $931 million, so we're going to wager no - unless it will employ the thousands of out-of-work standardologists we keep hearing about.

Do we need to spend $1.1 billion right now to create the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research? Say what?

This is not a joke - it's a genuine outrage, an insult to America's intelligence. It's a giveaway to every Democratic pet cause and inside-the-Beltway butter-my-bread program there is.

And Obama knows it.

The nation is crying for leadership, is crying for help. It's crying for . . . hope. And change. And all those things we were promised by the intelligent, charismatic young man who swept us off our feet and said he could make Washington, DC, right again.

The critical thing to understand is that it is not too late. President Obama could march up to Capitol Hill tomorrow, get congressional leaders in a room, and come out six hours later with a much better bill.

Knock a few heads together, say no to a few congressional porkmeisters, tell them to take their 2011 pet projects and shove 'em where the sun don't shine.

If you really want to scare them, tell them you'll go out and campaign for their opponent in the next election - regardless of party - if they don't give you the right bill to sign.

One packed with funding for shovel-ready projects, one that incentivizes small businesses to hire, one that cuts everybody's taxes and puts money in people's checking accounts so they can spend it on the barely-breathing retail sector.

Every mayor in America can give you a list of 10 projects that will put local construction workers on the job within days, not years.

And if nonsecurity discretionary spending is going to jump a staggering 81 percent in 2009 thanks to the bill, surely we can find a few billion dollars for our overstretched and worn-out military after it won two wars. That would be truly useful new spending.

Only two weeks into his presidency, it's already time for President Obama to put up or shut up - to put our money where his mouth was during the campaign.

If he saddles our nation - and our children - with $1 trillion in debt for the same old, bloated, wasteful Washington spend-a-palooza while unemployment goes to double digits and the breadlines grow longer, he will not be remembered as a new Abraham Lincoln.

He will be remembered as the man who presided over the total collapse of the American economy - and the superpower status built on top of it.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/02062009/postopinion/editorials/come_on__o__bring_bacon___not_pork__153842.htm?page=0