Check out this editorial in The Washington Post for some straight talk on the $4.19 billion for house-flipping included in the latest “stimulus” bill:
Helping hire, equip and pay police, a $4 billion item under the bill, might be a good idea, but writing checks to individual households for the same amount would do more to stimulate the economy. Ditto for $16 billion in Pell Grants for college students, $2.1 billion for Head Start and $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts. All of those ideas may have merit, but why do they belong in an emergency measure aimed to kick-start the economy? For sheer irrationality, it would be hard to top the $4.19 billion the bill would give to the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, on top of $4 billion authorized last year. This program gives local governments money to buy and rehabilitate homes that have been foreclosed on — thus giving lenders an incentive to foreclose on more houses.
