Obama's Billions

I was thinking of the stimulus bill and a great parallel came to mind.

One of my favorite campy comedy movies from the eighties was Brewster's Millions where Richard Pryor's character, Monty Brewster is the recipient of a strange codicil in a will. Seems he is the only living ancestor of a multi-millionaire and his now dead relative has checked him out and knows he will spend every last dime if he leaves him the whole thing.

We watch as a tape of the old man plays and he explains he will give him a million to walk away in which case a trust gets the money. He calls this the wimp option or something like that. OR, he can take the big challenge. If he can spend $50 million in one month and not have anything to show for it at the end of the month... no assets remaining from it, then he gets the entire $500 million fortune under the premise that if he spent that much money and had nothing to show for it, it would cure him of his drunk-sailor-on-leave spending habits. One of the conditions that makes it interesting is, Brewster can't tell anyone why he's spending all that money. Of course Brewster goes for the brass ring and all the hilarity ensues.

At one point early on, he hires a team of security guards with new uniforms to protect his money. Of course, in doing so, he helps make a good chunk of it do just that -- disappear via the huge salaries, rented uniforms, and limos to haul them around.

And that is exactly what is happening with the H.R. 1 aka the stimulus bill. They're gonna spend so much money trying to avert national financial ruin, they're gonna ensure it.