I’ve talked about the efficiency of our government before, but I’m starting to see it play out in real time. Right before my very eyes.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), also referred to as the stimulus bill, is showing up all across the Nation. And if you pay attention, you’ll realize how lousy a deal it really is.

On a trip to the in-laws this weekend, we ended up taking a detour through the backroads of a sleepy little town due to the removal and replacement of the towns one and only intersection. Sponsored of course by the ARRA.

Six weeks ago we made the same trip and took the same detour. At that time they working on the project for two weeks.

It’s clear to me that this is a government sponsored job simply because it’s taking so long. Any project funded through local means would have been done weeks ago.

This is but one clear example of how inefficient our government is with money. Little projects like this have popped up all over and they’re costing us millions a piece when they should be measured in hundreds of thousands.

Finance ARRA, government, spending, stimulus

An interesting article in this weeks BusinessWeek.  I’ve always liked the Facetime section of the magazine, and since Maria Bartiromo quite writing the column, I’ve wondered who will fill her shoes.

This week, Diane Brady chats with Pay Czar Ken Feinberg on the TARP program and its effectiveness.

Naturally, Feinberg is elated that the big banks are in a proverbial race to pay back the TARP money they borrowed from the government to help keep them out of Chapter 11. To hold any contempt would come off as sinister and socialistic.

The article speculates that it was the pay cap of $500,000 that really persuaded companies to pay back the money at such a rapid pace.  Feinberg does a great job of trying to spin the results into a “yeah, we knew it would happen this way”.  He goes on to say that the Government has no business regulating pay for companies that haven’t, or don’t, take tax payer money.  While I hope he and his compatriots in Washington actually believe that, unfortunately, I’m not buying it.

Lately my mantra has become, as the late Bob Novak put it: “Always love your Country, but never trust your Government”.

I believe the Government never wanted the banks to repay the money, at least not this quickly.  The fact that they want to turn around and hand the returned TARP money out for a second round of stimulus should be evidence enough.

In the end, the Government will end up getting most of the TARP money back, but not because companies suddenly became healthy enough to do so.  They got the money back because the banks found out how terrible it is to sleep with the Government, and wanted out ASAP.

Economics, Finance BusinessWeek, Facetime, government, Ken Feinberg, TARP

I’m not sure I know why this is so complicated.

Perhaps it’s because no one really understands the problem.

We don’t need healthcare reform.  We do need health insurance reform.  The cost of simple procedures is completely out of control.

Recently I had to take a trip to the emergency room at 2am with my son for a condition that turned out to be no big deal really, but as a rookie parent we had to err on the safe side.

I received the bill for that 4 hour adventure a week or two later, totaling over $800.  Interestingly enough, we incurred a $400 charge just for signing in at the window!

How absurd.

So let’s cut to the chase.

Our government is setting out to provide affordable healthcare to everyone, and you can read my rant on the word affordable in a previous post.

Aside from the fact that not a single person in this country even has a right to heathcare, the government thinks everyone needs it anyway.  And quite frankly, the governments record isn’t all that stellar.  Medicare, medicaid, social security… the postal service…

Our representatives have no idea where their constituency stands on this position, as many of them refuse to even find out.

One of my representatives voted for the House version of the healthcare bill even though a majority in his district don’t want it.  On top of that, he didn’t even read the 2,000+ page bill before he voted on it.  Big surprise.

So why is this so hard?

If our government would get back to basics instead of trying to fix problems by baffling us with thousands of pages of bullshit, we’d probably all be better off.  Let’s remember what rights we do have as set forth in the constitution, and not try and level the playing field by asking people who can pay, to pay for people who can’t.

What does a MRI, X-ray, CT-scan really cost, and how can we lower those costs.  The Japanese figured out how to make a cheaper MRI machine and got the cost of a MRI down to less than $100, a $1,400 proposition here in the U.S.

Figure out how we can promote the reduction in costs.  Creating competition in the health sector will be a start, along with opening up health insurance across state lines.

Let the free market work, and quite artificially stimulating it!

Health and Fitness, Politics Congress, government, healthcare, reform