RIGONOMICS:

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

That was a quote from President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in November, just a couple of weeks after Obama won the election.

The political point he is making is that only in crisis mode can you get things past Congress and the American people that in more normal times would not see the light of day.

To that end, you can see that this administration, with less than three weeks in office, is doing just that. They have stuffed the so-called economic stimulus bill with left-wing government-takeover socialism under the guise of economic stimulus.

The bill, which was supposed to be loaded up with “shovel ready” infrastructure projects to jump-start employment, has less than 10% of the money being spent on infrastructure, and even that amount will take up to three years to spend. So much for job creation.

During a time of national crisis, American citizens look to their president for leadership to get them past an immediate crisis.

A crisis creates a sense of urgency. As long as you have a crisis, you can count on the electorate and many members of Congress to put aside any use of their brain and vote yes on whatever is in front of them as long as you convince them that the world as we know it is about to end.

The problem for Obama is that Americans just went through that same fire drill four months ago when we were told the world would end the next day if President Bush’s $700-billion Troubled Assets Relief Program was not approved.

In that case we actually had a real crisis: The banking system had frozen up and companies like AT&T; could not even get an overnight loan. It took a week to get approved, and the sun still came up.

The problem Obama and Democrats in general have now is that they overreached.

Had they stuck to a bill that had real economic stimulus and some standard left-wing pork programs, it would have easily gotten through. However, the bill has $177 billion to bail out states like California that spend more than they bring in.

Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry must feel like a real idiot after he and his Legislature cut billions out of the budget to balance it. It also has $39 billion for free health care if you lose your job and $4.1 billion for preventive care. That, in Obama’s own words, is the beginning of giving free health care to everyone.

One more time our compassionate federal government rewards bad behavior by handing out free money from Washington, D.C., to states and school districts that cannot spend within their means.

On another note, over the past year the only job growth in this country has been government jobs.

Since the recession started in December 2007 we have lost more than 3.6 million jobs. But according to some on the left, it would have been worse if you do not count the 206,000 government jobs that were created during the same period.

When the “stimulus bill” gets passed, it may not create any private sector jobs, but it is guaranteed to increase government jobs.

How do we know? Because the bill has set aside billions of your tax dollars for “staffing” all the new government programs.

Let’s face it. It takes a lot of government employees to spend a trillion borrowed dollars.

The campaign talk of the government becoming more efficient is over.

There is no efficiency in the bill; only more government employees.

Obama said Friday while introducing his new economic team that it was “inexcusable and irresponsible” for Congress (read Republicans) to not pass this bill immediately. Remember, we are in a crisis; there is no time to think.

JIM RIGHEIMER is a Costa Mesa planning commissioner, a local developer and a GOP activist.