So congress passed the $800+ billion stimulus plan with nary a Republican vote, and we have Washington still not getting it that they are supposed to be figuring out how to fix the economy and not just kill it in new ways. Where is the strategic thinking in what projects should be funded by federal funds? The plan, here, is filled with pork ladden-nothing towards job creation projects. Some items are good ones, but why the pork? This is change?

It’s not like there’s been an absence of good ideas about how to fix things. Smart people know how to use high-impact projects to enhance infrastructure and competitiveness. Do these items look like either?

Law Enforcement
$3 billion for state and local law enforcement assistance.
$1 billion for community policing services.

Department of Defense
$4.5 billion to modernize and repair Army barracks and other defense facilities.

General Services Administration
$6 billion for construction and repair of federal buildings.
$1 billion for immigration facilities at ports of entry.

Homeland Security
$250 million for salaries and construction at ports of entry.
$500 million for purchase and installation of explosive detection systems.
$150 million for alteration or removal of obstructive bridges.
h/t boingboing

The tubes being the tubes, eventually someone out there, dumped all the federal spending into a spread sheet and did some analysis. The highlights:

1. Ready to Go Construction, Maintenance or Upgrades – $86,687,300,000 (23.86%)
2. Government Administration – Salaries & Program Expenses – $33,433,750,000 (9.20%)
3. Government Administration – Redistributive Programs – $23,646,000,000 (6.51%)
4. Funding Toward Research – $16,270,000,000 (4.48%)
5. Funding Toward “Potential” Construction or Employment – $89,479,000,000 (24.63%)
6. Funding for “Potential” Government Projects or Employment – $102,810,000,000 (28.30%)
7. WTF??? – $10,9666,000,000 (3.02%)

A New York Times blog provides the obligatory pie chart:

And here’s the accompanying analysis:

The summary’s introduction says the bill will contain “$275 billion in economic recovery tax cuts and $550 billion in thoughtful and carefully targeted priority investments with unprecedented accountability measures built in.” But those accountability measures seem to have a giant loophole; in the “executive summary” of spending measures that immediately follows this grandiose statement, the various spending programs total only $518.7 billion. So they’re, you know, just $31.3 billion short. (To be fair, there’s a much, much longer list that follows that I have not yet had a chance to tally up, but I will hunt for the missing $31.3 billion there.)