Less than half of Americans support this proposal according to polls, and many view it as yet another bailout like the unpopular one for bankers last fall. Just as New Deal spending programs did nothing to lift the United States out of the Great Depression, Obama's proposed "stimulus" package will simply dig us into a deeper hole.

Obama's proposed stimulus promises to create 3 million new jobs, but even if it reached that implausible goal, the price tag would be over $300,000 per job. And would they be short-term government jobs or jobs with a future?

The proposed stimulus is not even enough for some Obama supporters, perhaps because so little of it will reach average Americans. It "falls far short" in the words of Terence O'Sullivan, general president of the Laborers' International Union.

Of course, it falls short because government spending only bleeds the taxpayers to pay for government jobs, and what we need is private industry jobs. We need the government to stop its overtaxation and micromanagement of the U.S. economy, and to stop the unfair trade agreements and foreign-government policies that invite corporations to move their manufacturing overseas.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose approval rating has sunk to 38 percent, may meet the same fate as the speaker of the house 16 years ago. Ramming through anti-business feminist legislation like the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which invites lawsuits against large and small companies, will hurt instead of helping job creation.

Even moderate Republicans are risking the wrath of voters. Sen. Arlen Specter is already hearing the footsteps of a primary challenge from the right.

Nearly 50 House Democrats hold seats that were Republican in 2002, and perhaps another dozen seats long held by Democrats have been trending Republican. Nearly all those Democrats have just opened themselves up to challenge by voting to expose companies to new job-ruining lawsuits.

There is only one path to economic and social prosperity: less and limited government and enforcing a level playing field for international trade. If Obama and the liberals controlling Congress repeat the Democrats' mistake of 1993, it may be, as Yogi Berra famously said, deja vu all over again.