Federal stimulus dollars can't last forever

An America facing a full-scale economic collapse first has to avert it, by whatever means necessary. Shore up the banks. Keep people in their homes. Stimulate job creation by building roads and schools. Keep the auto companies afloat. Cut taxes.

This nation escaped the 20th century's Great Depression only after a huge amount of federal spending on a huge variety of enterprises, including World War II. The Depression still caused untold pain and suffering, but in 15 years, the nation had recovered.

Taking its cue from that, the Obama administration - and the Bush White House before it - has used an unthinkable amount of money to prop up an economy on the verge of collapse.

No one, honestly, has a full accounting of precisely how many dollars have been spent on banks and insurance companies, on mortgage companies and homeowners, on roads and schools and health insurance for the unemployed, on car companies and the railroads.

With a combination of expanded money supply, new debt and straight spending, Washington has extended more cash in a year than it has in most decades. The current federal deficit will be a figure we've never seen before and will be only a fractional estimate of how much skin Americans have in this fight.

All that is as it has to be. What doesn't have to be is the political mischief that has accompanied this crisis. From Democrats using spending to insinuate Washington ever deeper into the economy to Republicans who rediscovered fiscal conservatism only when the other party controlled the spending, Congress has borne out the nation's worst fears about it.

The government has committed $20,000 for each of us - man, woman and child - in service of the theory that massive spending can prevent massive pain. We've loaned money, but we've also given it away. The complete lack of accounting of where our trillions have gone - or even how much we've actually spent - is just one of the scary uncertainties we now face.

Last month, Democrats wielding pitchforks confiscated bonuses from executives at AIG while neglecting to find time to regulate its industry, where excesses created the fiscal crisis in the first place. When this page suggested that anger with AIG was a place to start, we didn't believe Congress would also stop there.

True to the political adage that a good crisis should never be wasted, Democrats have also spent the past 60 days busying themselves extending the reach of the federal government and reversing 30 years of deregulatory fervor. In the meantime, the GOP has gone into a positively Hooverian crouch, a party of the reflexive "no" to the Democrats' automatic "yes."

There has been good work done by both the Obama administration and its predecessor in identifying the depth of the trouble facing the nation and in throwing out enough lifelines. But huge sums have been spent. The accounting must begin.

All of which is to say that after months of throwing money hither and yon, spending not just our grandchildren's taxes but our great-grandchildren's taxes, the time has come to begin seriously considering how the nation will pay this giant bill.