A Way To Revive Spending

By Dan Newman
Saturday, February 7, 2009; A13

Last weekend, I stood outside the shuttered doors of a favorite local restaurant. As a small-business owner myself, I can only imagine how hard it was for those people to hang that out-of-business sign. I can also imagine the owners of that business sharing my opinion on what America needs most, and that surely isn't tax cuts.

You wouldn't know that from disputes in the Senate this week, where debate hinged on further tax breaks, despite their bulk. At $275 billion, tax cuts from the House bill were already twice the size of any spending project, and now the Senate has suggested $104 billion more. To keep the package closer to the requested $800 billion, several eleventh-hour compromises required reduced infrastructure spending, but not one suggested scaling back tax cuts. Indeed, Sen. John McCain's alternative demanded still more breaks for business.