Moreover, despite Obama's earnest-seeming pledge to block all earmarks, there will be an inevitable lard-up of the stimulus. When has there not?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled openness to the plan over the weekend as long as the GOP gets nominal input and kabuki hearings. The lard-up will guarantee that future capital is diverted to superfluous pork projects ("green jobs") and away from productive private enterprise. Instead of basic roads and bridges, infrastructure spending will go to bloated unions overseeing pie-in-the-sky construction projects like the $30 billion-plus high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, which California officials fully expect to be funded.

Bottom line: Obama's prescription for economic pain will at most be useless in encouraging short-term growth, while ensuring anemic longer-term growth for the next decade (and beyond) at the expense of Obama's kids and my kids and yours.

The truly bold thing for Obama to do would be to tell the panic-mongers and boondoggle-seekers to shove it, and to tell taxpayers to ride out the rest of the tough times while he gets Washington's own economic house in order.

Instead, it's more of the same old, same old mortgaging of our children's future for the sake of present political crisis management.