[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bush's plan is different from the U.N. plan. Under his plan, the countries don't get the money if they don't clean up their act. It's not a blank check. We want something in return. This is an incentive to correct their internal problems. A bribe, if you will, to make living in those countries desirable. It follows that once things improve they will stop coming to our door enmass. I'd say it's money well spent. Now we're spending it on welfare programs here in the U.S., making good little democrats and crowding the schools.

[SteamshipTime]

You imagine that extracting wealth from U.S. citizens and sending it to foreign nations will result in those nations immediately building profitable factories, roads, and grocery stores because only the right people will be dispensing the largesse to other right people. This has always been the premise behind all government spending. It is a false one.

If money spent on welfare in the U.S. produces lazy social democrats here, it can only have the same effect abroad. The surest way to get the least return and most disutility is to spend other people's money on other people. Public sector spending lacks any rational economic calculus and so is always unable to accomplish its stated ends.

Bush's economic ignorance rivals Al Gore's.

[lavaroise]

I did not mean to pick on Bush, I only was pointing at how exagerated the headline was about Bush being this mean ol tough Texan.