THAT’S DEBATABLE:

A House bill would send more than $11 billion in health-care and education money to California, wiping out nearly 25% of California’s budget shortfall. It’s part of the proposed $825-billion stimulus package President Barack Obama is touting as a top priority. Where do you stand on this bill? Is it a good idea? If not, what would you propose?

In short, this bill as we have seen it is a horrible idea. The point here is to stimulate the American economy.

Unfortunately, this bill will fail miserably at that.

In order to justify the huge level of spending, this bill must accomplish three things:

1) It must be stimulative. The spending in this bill for among other things, the National Endowment for the Arts is hardly stimulative.

2) It must have a significant multiplier effect. This bill is just plain spending with little or no multiplier tied in. Hundreds of millions of dollars spent on modernizing a government office building, or buying new cars for government employees has absolutely zero multiplier.

3) It must act quickly and strike directly at the problem. This bill does neither. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office says that only $26 billion of the $825 billion will be spent within six months; by that time we may very well be on our way out of this recession.

The mission here is to make the recession we are in now shorter and shallower. That way more Americans can keep their homes, jobs and businesses.

So what do I think we should do?

I think the main part of any stimulus should be to create consumer demand for homes and cars. This economy will not recover until the housing and car markets find a bottom and start rising again. An up-to-$25,000 refundable tax credit for the purchase of a house (new or existing) and up to $4,000 for a new car coupled with aggressive loan rates from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (4.5% or less) would get a lot of people to overcome their economic fears and take advantage of a great deal.

These should be short-term (no more than 10 months) and then phase out. Obviously, no sub-prime stuff here. This would only be for people with real down payments and real credit.

Put that together with a short-term Capital gains tax holiday to get capital to move to more efficient uses.

Also include some infrastructure spending like creating a national Wi-Fi broadband system, which would generate huge job creation as the tech sector figures out new ways to use that capability.

These are things that will create many downstream jobs in the private sector that are sustainable and would also serve to settle down the panic that is now out there in the minds of consumers.

It would not just be a one-time, feel-good government job.

When one of your neighbors has lost his job and another her home, that makes you scared. But then if one neighbor comes home in a new car and another rents their house out because they just bought a new house, you may not run out and do either of those things. But you’ll probably at least go out to dinner.

More than anything else, businesses need a market to sell to. And that’s how recessions end.

And this plan would cost only a fraction of the $825 billion in the Democrats’ giant spending package.

Rep. John Campbell

(R-Newport Beach)

Californians will ultimately pay for any money being spent whether it’s through a federal or state spending program.

If the people agree this money should be spent on health care and education, they should vote on it in California on a local level. Trying to trick the taxpayers into believing no one pays a price if the federal government does something is a fraud like most of the stimulus package.

You can’t spend your way out of hard times.

We haven’t seen any of the fiscal reforms necessary before our economy can rebound.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher

(R-Huntington Beach)