Economic Spending Package - Hurry up and wait

Last week I posted a note about the economic spending package (see here). One of my comments said that our president was running around like Chicken Little saying the sky would fall if the bill wasn't passed quickly.

As I expected, the bill passed quickly. However, the president changed his tune a little and waited four days to sign it. So what happened while he waited? Well, according to this article, quite a bit.

"Based on the average daily job loss in January, four lost days amounts to more than 77,000 lost jobs. In addition, four days is worth more than 35,000 foreclosure filings, based on averaging the 274,000 foreclosures and notices posted in January."

So what did Senate leader Harry Reid say? "Sitting idly by is not an option." Well, actually he said that after the Senate passed the bill and before the president sat idly by.

And what did the president say? "We'll begin making the immediate investments necessary to put people back to work doing the work America needs done." Of course he said this on Saturday, the immediately waited three more days before doing anything.

So why did the president wait? "The White House explained that it waited until Tuesday to sign the bill because the clerk of the House didn't deliver it in its enrolled form until mid-day Monday."

But the most important part of this story is the final line: That meant it took longer to prepare the bill for (President) Obama's signature than it took for lawmakers to read the final compromise version in its printed form."

Actually, I doubt any lawmaker read the bill in its entirety before voting. For me that should be good enough to vote no. Would you sign a contract without reading it? (maybe that's part of our foreclosure problem).