"The first rule of decision making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement." -- Peter Drucker
The storyline today will be the markets and the stimulus.
Even in the best of times legislating over how to spend $2 trillion is a messy affair; lobbyists swarm like locusts, secret deals are cut, slush funds and precedents are conjured from imaginary dollars (it will all be debt), and we will have a national debate over priorities and values.
Now compress that into a few days and overlay it with PANIC.
The mood of the hour is Do Something. Go Big. Stop Squabbling, which is understandable considering the hit the economy is about to take.
But it is also the formula for bad legislation and even worse policy. The "squabbling" is what we do in a constitutional Republic; it's the way the system was set up. We're not supposed to give the federal government the power to essentially take over the economy in a mere weekend.
Conservatives used to understand the need for prudence. But conservatives also used to be against socialism too.
The stakes are high not just for the parties in DC, but for the rest of us as well, because we are about to explode the national debt in a one-shot effort to stave off depression. So it seems a good idea to get it right, and keep the sleaze to a minimum.
