An analysis of this urgent "stimulus" plan by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that less than half of the $30 billion in highway construction money would be released into the economy over the next four years.

The CBO also found that only $26 billion of $274 billion in infrastructure spending would be used by next fall. Only 64 percent of the entire stimulus would reach the economy by 2011.

Just in time for elections. Probably just a coincidence.

In the early 1980s, we dug out of a deep recession by easing the tax burden on businesses and American people to save real jobs rather than creating jobs we didn't need.

Now, worse than all the pork or the massive de facto tax hike (someone pays -- always) is the mass acceptance that we can stimulate the economy by buying our way out of trouble.

Democrats, in fact, have exploited our alarming situation by trying to enact highly ideological policy that is jammed with political payoffs (the very same crime they accused the Bush administration of committing).

Because in this "stimulus" plan, the only things stimulated are the imaginations of power-hungry partisans.