The $884.5-billion economic stimulus bill now being debated in the Senate and an $819-billion version passed by the House should be called what they are: the largest government spending bills in U.S. history. The bills are not a pure stimulus but rather piles of money thrown at things that Congress seems to debate every year, now cloaked with the seemingly beneficial argument that the federal government is doing something good for the economy.
There are many things that good government policies can do, like creating a positive environment for all business activity or identifying and executing public-works projects necessary for the good of the people. Those policies can be pumped up in bad economic times to help the economy, but not punctured. The failure of previous stimulus and bailout efforts is being used as the rationale for more of the same kind of attempts. Japan made that mistake in the 1990s and actually may have prolonged its pain.