To argue that the dysfunction of the federal government is purely a Republican issue would be naïve. Long unable to move forward on Democratic legislation, the new Congressional majority of 2009 was quick to let loose and take advantage of a Democratic executive branch.

The ARRA was the first significant legislation to wear the stamp of a Congress controlled by Democrats. Although it has been successful, in spite of Republican spin, one has to wonder how effective it might have been if more keenly honed to address directly the specific issue of job creation. It’s true that it included $288 billion in tax relief that cut the tax bills of 95% of Americans, and that it also sent $224 billion to aid the states and pin up Medicaid and unemployment insurance. But the $275 billion that went to direct investment was not, like the other portions, intended to sustain current spending and break the fall. It was allocated for the express purpose of creating jobs.

It is within this direct investment component of the stimulus that the Democrats established their most resounding successes, but unfortunately it also exhibits their most disappointing failures. There’s little room for legitimate complaint about the $90 billion allocated for clean energy or the $20 billion that will fund the digitizing of medical records. Both of these programs will pay dividends to American taxpayers far into the future. But the vast sum of grant money distributed into the black hole of government gives cause for concern and lends substance to the Republican argument that Democrats are all about bigger government.

Though the data is not coded to ease such extraction, a brief analysis of the information provided for download at http://www.recovery.gov/ reveals some interesting facts. The data representing all allocations through the end of June includes 347,915 awards of contracts, grants and loans, totaling $237 billion. Interestingly, a query of the data looking for “recipients” with a name that includes “school” or “education” finds 59,916 awards totaling $47 billion. Similarly, a search of “college” or “university” nets 26,047 awards for nearly $17 billion. Looking for funding that went to cities, a query of “city of” returns 16,364 award and another $17 billion; counties apparently received on the order of $12 billion, state departments of transportation around $19 billion, and other state departments and housing authorities close to $20 billion more.

All told, on the order of $131 billion appears to have gone to government organizations. This is not to say that none of this funding found its way into the private sector, or that thousands of private sector jobs were not created. Many of these government agencies, from school districts to transportation departments, maintain a practice of subcontracting to industry vendors. But once the money is fed into the bureaucratic machine, suspicion arises, and rightfully so. Such practice is viewed as more SNAFU (Situation Normal All Fouled Up) because accountability and transparency are severely obscured. The result is that both the motivation and effectiveness of the investments is appropriately called into question.

Fortunately for Republicans, not long after the Stimulus, the Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. From that point on, steadfast Republican obstruction has reigned supreme over timid Democratic initiative. As stated above, the Republicans, without doubt, deserve their share of the blame in this, but if not for the Democrat’s extreme lack of intestinal fortitude, much more meaningful legislation could have been passed. From healthcare to finance reform, the Democrats have allowed themselves to be bullied, never once requiring the filibustering Republicans to actually stand up and control the floor of the Senate. Instead, each time they compromised and produced diluted legislation of questionable worth.

In the end, the most well defined accomplishment of our near completely dysfunctional Congress is a starkly polarized populace. Americans on both sides of the debate blame the other. The Tea Party blindly carries the banner of smaller government and continues to grow in its numbers, railing against an ineffective government but upholding positions that only promise to make it more so. When will we learn?

Government is not the enemy, but the sorry excuse in Washington sure is. The solutions are before us, but the path we’ve chosen, through two political parties that fight harder for control than for the wellbeing of the nation is leading us to destruction. The American people need to wake up, to refuse to listen to anymore political rhetoric and to start asking more intelligent questions. America doesn’t need smaller government, nor does it need larger — it needs effective government, and it needs it now.

Whether you’re conservative or liberal, Republican, Democrat, or Libertarian, there’s one thing upon which most people will agree: our federal government is broken. The American economy crashed in 2008, and though the experts say that the Great Recession has officially passed, most people would beg to differ. The sad truth is that most Americans were hurt in the collapse; they either lost wealth or income or both. Now, two long years later, far too many people are still struggling and waiting for a dysfunctional government to implement effective solutions.

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) reported on Monday that the most severe recession since the Great Depression had ended in June of last year. The NBER made their determination based on several economic indicators, including total output and industrial production. The facts, according to the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), are that we’ve now regained 69% of the GDP and 38% of sales. The problem is that only 9% of private sector jobs have returned.

As of the end of August, national unemployment was still stuck at 9.6% and the broader U-6 rate, which includes the underemployed, was at 16.7%. So, it doesn’t take a psychologist to understand that with nearly 15 million unemployed Americans, people are justifiably angry with a government that was able to restore the banks, but seems unfazed itself and unable to help the average citizen.

With the 2010 midterm elections now only six weeks away, this sense of anger toward what’s perceived as an ineffective and self-serving federal government is what’s feeding public opinion. Wall Street brought down the economy, but they’re doing fine. Washington set the stage for the collapse, sat idly while it occurred and has not yet brought back the wealth or employment that was taken from the middle and working classes. Is the federal government culpable? Absolutely — but Americans would be well served to recall the depths of the pit from which we’re trying to crawl.

Although the recession that “ended” last June officially started in December of 2007, by the end of July 2008, unemployment was at a comparatively low 5.7%, with total job loss for the year of 463,000.  Then in September, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and the freefall began. By October all lending had stopped; the GDP was down 6%; job loss totaled 1.7 million, global trade collapsed, and net household worth had dropped by $5 trillion.

President Bush signed the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) into law in October, and although it did feed the thieves behind the housing crash, it could very well have prevented the 25% unemployment levels that hit in the 1930s. But TARP or not, when President Obama took office, the economy was hemorrhaging nearly 600,000 jobs per month, and total job loss for 2008 had been recalculated at 3 million.

The new administration was desperate to enact measures to prevent further economic decay, but with interest rates nearly at zero percent, monetary policy had already been exhausted. So, in response, President Obama championed the only course of action still available to the federal government — a stimulus.

It was one month into the new Democratic administration, the economy was in dire straits, and the number of jobs lost each month was still increasing. The federal government needed to act, so a stimulus spending plan was quickly formed, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was passed by Congress and signed into law on February 16. Sadly, a sign of things to come, the legislation was passed without a single Republican vote in the House and only three in the Senate. The most partisan period in contemporary politics had begun.

Next: Broken Government — Republican Sabotage

Article first published as President Obama and His Frankenstein Monster on Technorati.

Associated Press released an article yesterday entitled Some states suing feds also claim health subsidies. The story tells of seven states, amongst the 20 now filing suit to overturn President Obama’s healthcare legislation, that have also filed to receive subsidies from the program. Many would conclude that it’s hypocritical to take money from a program that you’re fighting to end, but while a valid opposition argument is hard to imagine, it’s equally difficult to assign full blame on the deceit of these states.

It is the duty of every state to best serve the needs of its citizens, so if there is funding available through the program, it would be irresponsible for a state to not seek the subsidy. In a similar manner, if the presumption is made that the suits being taken against the purchase requirement are motivated from a desire to serve the people, then that action too must be considered appropriate. So, if these two assertions are true, wherein does the hypocrisy originate?

Of course, purported motives could be a sham; certain state officials may actually engage in litigation for purely political purposes, but that’s unlikely to be a universal rule. So, does this mean that there is no hypocrisy in the cases where the motives are honestly associated with the good of the citizenry? Perhaps not — but such cases beg the question of how an action can simultaneously be so duplicitous and yet pure.

One possible conclusion is that the duplicity is inherent in the object — that the healthcare legislation itself contains the hypocrisy. It was sold as a progressive solution to address inequities in the American healthcare system. It was also touted as reform, yet resulted only in expansion of the system that was already in place by adding government subsidies and mandatory purchase requirements. Whether or not anyone chooses to accept this as hypocrisy, the act of pushing legislation under some pretense, like reform, but really providing nothing of the sort, must be considered duplicitous.

I’ll not even offer an opinion regarding the legality of requiring everyone to purchase healthcare insurance, but I will suggest that it stretches the interpretation of regulating interstate commerce — the constitutional basis upon which the law has been justified. It would seem that the medical insurance industry could be regulated without making mandatory the purchase of medical insurance. And it’s true that the very premise that people can be required to purchase something without the ability to opt out is unique to this case in all of American government.

What occurs to me is that President Obama may have had pure motives when he set out to address healthcare, but in the end he created a Frankensteinian system. There was really only one legitimate method of creating a hybrid public/private system that could provide healthcare to those who would otherwise not have it — that was through the establishment of a “public option.” The public option would have addressed the issue of reform by establishing both a source for coverage of the uninsured and also competition within the industry. President Obama created this Frankenstein monster when he caved and allowed the medical insurers and Big Pharma to write the legislation which guaranteed then 32 million new patients and did nothing to reduce costs.

Sadly, the state suits protesting the healthcare law are perhaps the least significant consequence of the President’s creation. The real horror is that his hybrid abomination is truly a Frankenstein monster and as such is destined to contribute to his ruin. When the President should have been focused squarely on the economy and Wall Street reform, he was instead off in his Dr. Frankenstein laboratory making deals with the health services lobby. He then used up all of his political capital to pass healthcare legislation, with which neither the left nor right are happy.

Roll the calendar forward, and new financial legislation was passed but was weak and diluted, the economy is still in the dumper, unemployment refuses to subside, and healthcare costs are higher than ever. Had President Obama forgone healthcare and been more focused on the economy, would we be in better shape now? It’s hard to tell, but one thing is certain — there wouldn’t be this Frankenstein monster lurking about, and the Democrats would likely be in much better shape for November.