Here's What $800 Billion Buys Today

The final stimulus package is the final insult to taxpayers.

Veronique de Rugy | February 13, 2009

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It's a terrible bill, in other words, both on its face and in the details. For the reasons I detailed here, it won't stimulate the economy. It violates many of President Obama's promises. Most of the deals that created it were made behind closed doors, meaning that there is virtually zero transparency and no real way to track where, how, or why money is being spent. On top of that, the bill is still packed with items that any vaguely impartial observer would call pork.

But once it hits Obama's desk, we'll be calling it the law.

Veronique de Rugy is a columnist at Reason magazine and an economist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.