More Non-Stimulating 'Stimulus' Nonsense

Should we be shocked now, or later?  Excerpts from the Washington Examiner:

Remember the "shovel-ready" projects lined up for all that stimulus money? It turns out social spending, more than construction, is hitting pay dirt in the huge federal effort to turn the economy around.

The public face of the stimulus package has been the worker in a hard hat, getting back on the job to rebuild the nation's infrastructure.

The reality of how the vast majority of the stimulus money will be spent is quite different, and that raises questions about how much help the Recovery Act achieved by President Barack Obama will be to the economy in the long run.

Most of the roughly $300 billion coming directly to the states is being funneled through existing government programs for health care, education, unemployment benefits, food stamps and other social services.

"We all talked about 'shovel-ready' since September and assumed it was a whole lot of paving and building when, in fact, that's not the case," said Chris Whatley, the Washington director of the Council of State Governments, a trade group for state governments. He estimates states will get three times more money for education than for transportation.

Two-thirds of recovery money that flows directly to states will go toward health care.

By comparison, about 15 percent of the money is for transportation, including airports, highways and rail projects [at least some of which are completely unnecessary and a ridiculous waste], according to Federal Funds Information for States, a service of the National Governors Association and the National Conference of State Legislatures.

While billions of dollars eventually will flow to infrastructure projects, Democrats who crafted the package say they directed most of it to existing government programs such as Medicaid and education to prevent state economies from slipping even more. One goal was to help fill state budget gaps, keeping teachers and others employed while strengthening the social safety net.

It's an approach that has led to debates in statehouses and among economists about whether more of the money should have been steered to projects that generate more private-sector jobs and lead to long-term growth.

"Too many of the dollars are social service dollars," said George Runner, a Republican state senator in California. "The most compassionate thing we can do is to get the economy going and get jobs created."

Some elements emphasizing longer-term investments will not see big spending until 2011, according to a recent report by the president's Council of Economic Advisers.

In Georgia, two-thirds of the $3.9 billion the state expects to receive over the next 16 months will go to support existing social programs. The rest will be spent on public works and energy-efficiency projects designed to create jobs.

Among the poorest states in the nation, Mississippi expects to receive about $2.8 billion in federal stimulus money through December 2010. So far, about 13 percent of that is for construction, mostly highways and bridges. The rest will be spent as it is in other states, to preserve existing government programs and jobs.

At the time, conservatives were predicting this exact thing: the 'stimulus' wasn't going to stimulate job growth so much as entrench Democrat political power.  Looks like the Right was right (again), and the Left was full of crap (again).

There's my two cents.