Right now it is hard to come by someone in politics who has kept a level head throughout our current financial crisis. We are putting an awfully large amount of trust in a group of people who don't have the faintest clue what they are doing.
Conservative economics seem to have been completely disregarded, but even more concerning is the fact that very few people in charge of running this country seem to care about the amount of tax-payer dollars being thrown around - beyond what it might mean for their future political ambitions, anyway.
In the midst of our fear of impending economic doom and more recently our rage over the AIG bonus situation, several questions are being left unasked. For the most part, both Republican and Democrat, we are simply accepting this plan and running with it.
Not everyone, however, has simply gone along with the president and the majority of Congress.
One individual who has stood out in this regard recently is South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who is known for his conservative economic approach and libertarian leanings.
Sanford, along with a small contingent of other Republican governors, has made headlines recently by rejecting federal stimulus money. I am thrilled that all of these individuals had the gall to reject this money, but I am especially excited by the outstanding reasoning Sanford gave in his Mar. 20 column in the Wall Street Journal.
Sanford originally opposed the idea of giving stimulus money to the states. When the bill passed anyway, South Carolina was allotted two billion dollars, $700 million of which he was given control over. The federal government wanted the money to be used for things like social programs or infrastructure, however Sanford was hesitant.
In his column he points out that South Carolina already has a considerable amount of debt and that stimulus money runs out in two years. What this means is that if he were to use the $700 million to fund a new program, in two years the state would have to find a new source of income or go into more debt to continue funding that new program.
Governor Sanford has received a lot of criticism for this move because the money he has refused was intended to be used for things like education, health care and a variety of other budget deficiencies. It is understandable that people would think these are worthy projects but we have to look long term.
Getting out of debt has to be one of South Carolina's top priorities and most rational people will agree that a good first step to eliminating debt is to stop creating more debt.
So rather than simply spend this money, Sanford asked the Obama administration that South Carolina be allowed to use the money to pay down the state's existing debt.
According to his column, this would have saved South Carolina close to $300 million in debt service and interest payments – money that could be used in the future for all of these other good things.
But apparently the Obama administration isn't into saving money - just spending it. So instead of getting money to pay of his state's debt, Sanford received a round of attack ads courtesy of the Democratic National Committee and a rejection notice from the White House. So Sanford told the Feds that they could just keep their money.
Unfortunately, the type of responsible government displayed by Sanford has been quite rare in the recent months.
When the economy experiences a recession, we cannot simply stop looking long term. People are really struggling right now and it is important to take their struggles into account and to work to ensure their basic needs are met. However, we can't do so at the sake of the long term stability of the government.
Recent estimates suggest that the current economic plan will add over nine trillion dollars to the federal budget. In addition, there is no telling how much state debt, such as the kind Governor Sanford is worried about, will be indirectly created by the stimulus plan.
Where will this leave us in ten years?
Nine trillion dollars is an unfathomable amount of debt, and according to the Washington Post, the Obama administration's response to charges that this level of debt is unacceptable was to shrink its debt estimate window from ten years to five, thus seeming to eliminate five trillion dollars in debt.
I'm sorry, but that's not liberal economics, that's stupid economics.
We cannot just jump into excessive spending. We have to be empathetic to the struggles of people affected by the economy, but it is incredibly problematic to respond by creating a huge problem that we can just put off for ten years.
Even if Obama's great and glorious plan does manage to get us out of this economic mess, its setting us up for a huge problem down the road.
Luke fischer is a junior secondary education major. Reach him at lukefischer@dailynebraskan.com.
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