Mike Hubbard: Did anyone really read the stimulus bill?

The more it is analyzed and dissected, I am increasingly convinced that not a single congressman who supported Barack Obama’s $787 billion “stimulus” package even bothered to read the 1,200-page bill before casting his vote.

What once seemed to be a sincere, if philosophically misguided, attempt to reverse the on-going global economic crisis now appears to be the largest implementation of liberal dogma and policy since the days of Roosevelt’s “New Deal” and Johnson’s “Great Society.”

And though the package offers billions in funding to the states to replace the revenue shortfalls most are experiencing, the money comes with a set of cast iron fiscal handcuffs that even Harry Houdini couldn’t escape. The federal regulations are so extreme that many governors, including our own, are being forced to reject millions of dollars in potential funding.

Some may accuse me of viewing the issue from a purely partisan standpoint because I serve as chairman of the Alabama Republican Party, but even Democrat governors like Phil Bredesen of Tennessee have joined Gov. Bob Riley and others in saying they will forego a portion of the stimulus money and the constraints it carries.

One segment of Obama’s package, for example, includes federal funding to assist the states in paying unemployment benefits, and, on its face, the provision appears sound and logical. But like most things emanating from Washington, D.C., the devil is in the details.

Though the federal funding expires in just a few years, accepting the money requires states to totally rewrite their unemployment laws and provide jobless benefits to those who do not currently qualify, including those who worked part-time jobs and some who quit jobs. Once the money is exhausted, states would be required to continue paying the benefits with their own dollars in the truest sense of an unfunded federal mandate.

This requirement alone would cost Alabama an additional $28 million annually and would require the state to raise taxes on struggling mom-and-pop businesses and their employees at a time of deep national recession. To do so would not stimulate Alabama’s economy. It would extinguish it.

Estimates indicate that Alabama is in line to receive approximately $3 billion from the total package, $1 billion earmarked for education purposes and $2 billion for a range of non-education programs.

On the non-education side, the largest portion of the stimulus infusion is earmarked for Medicaid funding, which is, by far, the largest big-ticket budget item. Filling the Medicaid shortfall with new federal dollars will lessen the agency’s demand for state funding and allow other government agencies to avoid the budget axe.

Almost $600 million of the $1 billion in education-related funding is discretionary money that may be used to offset the revenue shortfall in the Education Trust Fund budget over the next couple of years. The other $400 million is earmarked toward specific programs, such as Head Start, which have little to do with stimulating the economy and everything to do with big government social programming from Washington.

Rather than passing a “stimulus” package that included a maze of federal regulation and enough red tape to keep every bureaucrat in Washington quite happy for a long time, Congress would have better served us by passing a series of broad tax cuts and awarding no-strings-attached block grants to the states.

I fear that the plan approved by Obama and his Congressional allies may prove to be one of the biggest, and certainly most expensive, mistakes made in American economic history.

Rep. Mike Hubbard (R-Auburn) represents House District 79 and is the House Minority Leader. He also serves as Chairman of the Alabama Republican Party.