Mac-Coleman

19 September 2011 –

Invest (in vest`), v.t. 1.to put (money) to use, by purchase or expenditure, in something offering profitable returns, esp. interest or income. 7. To infuse or belong to, as a quality or characteristic does: (Webster’s 1989)

I wish there were more words in the already largest vocabulary of any language on earth. Then, I could explain the President’s newest economic proposals more succinctly. Alas, I fail. In simple speak: His proposals quack like a duck and walk like a duck; they sure ain’t the swans he says they are! The GOP controlled House should give them the time they deserve.

I would, however, like to focus on a particular word that the President has overused lately. The verb “invest” and the noun “investment” rarely, if ever, apply to government spending practices, yet he tries to invest each of his proposals with their power. I have heard the word for years in military and government service. Many a lazy proponent has elasticized the word’s meaning to justify continued or increased spending on everything from upgrades to old outmoded weapons systems to new weapons systems that fit neither old nor new strategies to direct aid programs in the world’s latest crisis pest hole to the deployment of troops and their legions of supporting contractors to the same pest holes. None of these uses of tax payers’ money properly fits the concept of investment. Now, the President abuses the concept by range-gate-steal the argument to a familiarly false one. He calls profligate spending targeted at specific groups in society—long a government vice—investment in America at large. He implies strongly, but never shows with accepted economic formula, that this massive increase in spending and concomitant taxation can effect a direct return to the taxpayer of some benefit that he cannot get elsewhere more cheaply or more effectively. Since the government does not do anything well or cheaply, calling such government spending an investment is indeed a sham.

There is a weak and specious correlation between increasing taxation and spending to extend unemployment benefits and to create temporary union jobs and an improved economy that will return a profit to the average, middle-class taxpayer. In economic fact, based on the last 75 years of increasing federal spending, nothing the government does with taxpayers’ money can be defined as a better investment than what the taxpayers can do with that same money if it is left in their pockets.

OK…one way or the other, Mr. President. Call it spending, and try to get the money from the GOP controlled House, which was soundly elected Republican as a result of your failed economic policies. Or, call it investment and try to get the money from the same GOP House. At least in the former case, you would have Webster’s dictionary on your side. It would be a straightforward plea, not a nefarious one. You are going to lose either way, but you would sound more honest quacking honestly.