Here’s what I don’t get:

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is supposed to be money injected into the economy to “create new jobs as well as save existing ones, spur economic activity and invest in long-term economic growth, Foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending.”

The Senate (mostly Democrats) just approved a new $15 billion “jobs bill” to attempt to stave off growing unemployment and to create jobs. How is it that tax incentives are going to create jobs? If I’m a small business owner, the promise of a few thousand dollars for hiring someone doesn’t keep my lights on if I have NO WORK to do! If I pay a worker a salary of $30,000 a year, how would a $5,000 tax credit allow me to employ him? Especially if I’ll end up having to now pay for his health insurance, or pay a PENALTY if I don’t?!

Seriously, who is doing this math up on the hill? I think the home front needs to for once take a look towards the war front. We have been involved in “nation building” in Iraq and Afghanistan now for 8 years or so. This has been a combination of ousting corrupt leaders, re-writing constitutions and holding “free and fair” elections. Simultaneously we’ve been fighting a counter insurgency campaign. This has been a combination of force protection for the civilian populations, restoring basic amenities and social services, and having the local populations take back their lives.

And how have we accomplished these things?

In Afghanistan where only 12 percent of the land is arable, 80 percent of the labor force comes from agriculture. How do we go about buttressing their economy to function after decades of war? Once the population is secured we give people money to buy land, farm equipment and tools. We sponsor water and irrigation projects to bring life to people and villages. We give money to people to build schools, and  then give them money to pay the teachers.

We do NOT offer tax incentives to blindly re-employ farm hands (to probably work illegal poppy fields) and teachers (to probably work in thousands of madrassas that teach extremist Islam). Congress, is it really this complicated? How does an incentive to hire employees fix the problem of NO WORK!

What was one of the first infrastructure projects undertaken in Afghanistan? Building roads, particularly the ring route the circumvents the country. What did that do? It took thousands of men, hours and dollars — thousand of men, hours and dollars that would have went from the Taliban to the locals to plant IED’s on those same routes if we sat idly and offered tax incentives to the first contractor to come around and do it for us, or for them more importantly.

There is a nasty pot hole I have to swerve around every day on my way to work, and I have to slowly go over the curb at the end of my street to avoid a flat tire. Giving money to the city to fix every damn pothole would undoubtedly create jobs, and probably prevent half of the accidents that occur from pot hole swerving. Road works projects are always touted as the easiest undertakings to create jobs. In Montana, one project on two miles of road will employ 150 people and cost $8.5 million.

How easy is that? If I was Uncle Sam, I’d put on my pin-stripped top hat, load up my sack with giant dollar sign, and make it rain at every city/village/town hall from Boston to L.A.

Hind sight being what it is, after a few years in Iraq the military found out about all of the disgraceful instances of money laundering/skimming/bookkeeping mishaps that took place during reconstruction. We have a saying that goes something like “a good plan executed today is better than a great plan executed too late.” Had we waited years to decide how to spend money rebuilding Iraq it would have taken more than the 2006 surge to pull the country back from self destruction.

And look at us now: December was the first month of the war with no US combat deaths. All US troops will be out of the country in 2011. Yet at one point Iraq was seen as lost forever without indefinite US presence of over 100,000 troops.

Considering that our own US economy is not THAT bad, perhaps some of the same nation building techniques the military has tested with blood and sweat could prove useful at home. Put real money into real projects executed by the local people — till the soil, plant the seeds, add water and watch the economy re-grow. Moving a tree that’s shading part of the garden won’t do the trick. A hands-on, down and dirty approached needs to be pursued.

I don’t know if it’s all of the snow days these Senators have been getting, but all of this arm-chair leadership isn’t going to cut it. Hind sight being what it is, perhaps we need our own American surge of 2010.

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