My colleague Alan Reynolds has a message for all the paranoid androids in Washington…

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama promised that bills coming to his desk from Congress would sit for five days so the public could read, analyze and comment on them before he signed them into law. In yesterday’s Cato Daily Podcast, Jim Harper, Cato’s director of information policy studies, discussed Obama’s record on fulfilling that promise.

Of course, Obama’s guarantee to let a bill sit for five days did not include emergency legislation. As for the stimulus bill, should it be considered “emergency legislation?” Harper says no.

A five day difference from the time it goes into effect is very small, especially in regard to the fact that most of the people who are expecting to change their behavior in light of the passage of the bill will be able to do that during the five day pendency of it…it should sit for five days before it gets signed, according to the promise that President Obama made during his campaign.

The Obama administration is shaping up to be little more than the Office of Doomsayer in Chief, at least in the early going, and it is being obediently assisted by the media. In education, USA Today gave the office a nice boost this morning by reporting on a Center for Reinventing Public Education projection that without a stimulus, states might have to cut their education spending by 18.5 percent over the next three years. And CRPE did not include a projection for local cuts, which researcher Marguerite Roza said were impossible to make.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan seized the moment, stating in the article that the analysis “obviously confirms what we have feared: that there is so much at stake now and we’re really trying to stave off catastrophe.”

Here we go again…

For one thing, predicting budget shortfalls is hardly an exact science. Moreover, unreported by USA Today, the CRPE analysis is based on the assumption that states will cut spending in all areas equally in response to revenue shortfalls. But in few states does anyone wield the kind of political power that the education establishment brings to bear.

Suppose, though, that total per-pupil expenditures – consisting of local, state, and federal dough – were to decrease by 18.5 percent. (Obviously, the feds aren’t going to cut funding, but let’s pretend that some sense somehow wafted into Washington and caught the pols by surprise.) Where would that put us? On par with Depression era funding? Modern day Sri Lanka or Zimbabwe?

Try again.

Unfortunately, the latest per-pupil funding data the federal government has is from the 2004-05 school year, which is likely lower than what was spent this year. But let’s use it anyway, if for no other reason than to give the Chicken Littles every benefit of the doubt. In 2004-05, the average per-pupil expenditure in the United States was $11,470. Reduce that by 18.5 percent, and you’re spending $9,348.

At what year does that put us? Adjusted for inflation, right about at 1996–97 — hardly major time travel! And compared to other industrialized nations? Still in the top six, nearly tied with Denmark, and that is comparing our average for elementary and secondary schooling with just secondary schooling –- the more expensive level — for everyone else.

Considering all of this along with the evidence that I have laid out previously showing the almost complete disconnect between spending and performance, as well as the massive bloat in the system, and such a cut shouldn’t be called a “catastrophe.” It should be called “why the hell didn’t we make such a cut years ago?”

News reports indicate there is some sort of final deal on the so-called stimulus. Some of the politicians are acting as if this massive spending bill is “fiscally responsible” merely because the total amount of money is fractionally smaller than the House and Senate proposals. Ironically, as Veronique de Rugy explains for rea​son​.com, even the Congressional Budget Office, which relies on a deeply-flawed Keynesian economic model, is warning that bigger government will hurt the economy’s long-run performance.

In a report to Sen. Judd Gregg (R‑N.H.), the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) writes in plain English—well, economic language—that the Senate bill would eventually cause not a stimulus but a recession in “the longer run.” …On the CBO’s The Director’s Blog, Elmendorf explains why the Senate legislation would eventually reduce economic output:

The principal channel for this effect is that the legislation would result in an increase in government debt. To the extent that people hold their wealth in the form of government bonds rather than in a form that can be used to finance private investment, the increased government debt would tend to ‘crowd out’ private investment—thus reducing the stock of private capital and the long-term potential output of the economy.

The Senate might have done something straightforward, like cutting the corporate income tax or cutting the payroll tax that all workers pay. Instead, most of the provisions are tax credits, many of which are refundable. In other words, individuals and businesses need to pay their taxes up front and then will get money back from the government. These sorts of programs, aimed incentivizing investment, are better understood as spending programs disguised as “tax cuts.”

And here is one more thing to consider: There is absolutely no evidence that any stimulus package in the past 80 years has goosed economic activity—not FDR’s during the Great Depression, not Japan’s during the 1990s, and not George W. Bush’s in 2001 and 2008. If anything, the economic evidence suggests that such spending packages actually intensified and prolonged misery.

The Congressional Budget Office is right, albeit for reasons other than the ones generated by its garbage-in-garbage-out model. Bigger government hurts economic efficiency by diverting resources from the productive sector of the economy, and it does not matter whether government spending is financed by taxes or borrowing.

HITN’s Destination Casa Blanca has posted their hour-long program — featuring yours truly — on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program expansion that President Obama just signed into law (the utter lack of evidence of effectiveness notwithstanding).

During the program, I shatter the myths that SCHIP is for low-income children, that it’s a cost-effective way of improving children’s health, etc.

I guess we know what you’ll be doing for the next hour.

The forces of European consolidation are attempting to force through the Lisbon Treaty without allowing anyone other than the Irish to vote. And, of course, the Irish have been pressed to vote a second time since they made the “wrong” decision last year, rejecting Lisbon.

But now the treaty faces a serious challenge before the German high court. Reports the EU Observer:

Several of the eight judges in charge of examining whether the EU’s Lisbon Treaty is compatible with the German constitution have expressed scepticism about the constitutional effects of further EU integration.

According to reports in the German media, the debate during the crucial two-day hearing starting on Tuesday (10 Februrary) on the treaty centred on criminal law and the extent to which it should be the preserve of member states rather than the EU.

The judges questioned whether the EU should be allowed to increase its powers in criminal law.

Judge Herbert Landau said new EU powers in criminal justice affected “core issues” of German legislative authority.

“These are issues affecting the shared values of a people,” he said.

Judge Udo Di Fabio, who prepared the procedure and will deliver the judgement on the treaty, asked whether the transferral of powers to the EU really means more freedom for EU citizens.

“Is the idea of going ever more in this direction not a threat to freedom?” he asked, according to FT Deutschland.

Judge Rudolf Mellinghoff asked whether the treaty was already “in an extensive way” being applied when its comes to the area of criminal sanctions in environment issues – the European Commission may sanction companies for polluting the environment

In all, four of the eight judges questioned the Lisbon Treaty.

The Irish vote was bad enough, causing wailing and gnashing of teeth throughout the continent’s Eurocratic elite. If the EU’s most important country rejects the Lisbon Treaty, the entire EU project will be in doubt. After all, it’s one thing to browbeat the Irish, threatening to toss them out of the EU or push them into some form of second-rate status. But the EU couldn’t do that with Germany and survive.

It’s hard to imagine the German court overturning the government’s ratification of the treaty. But no one expected the Irish to say no as well. Europe might soon find itself dealing with a political as well as economic crisis.

A huge threat from the $800 billion stimulus plan in front of Congress this week is that much of the spending may morph into a permanent expansion of government. If the bill is signed into law, lobbyists will immediately start pressing for the long-term extension of all the new spending on health care, transportation, education and other items.

Let’s look at the Senate bill to illustrate the fiscal impact of such a nightmare scenario. The CBO finds that the Senate bill would increase outlays by $546 billion and cut taxes $292 billion over fiscal years 2009–2019.

Figure 1 shows CBO’s assumed pattern of spending under the bill. Since we are already part way through 2009, outlays peak in 2010 at $206 billion and taper off after that. Note that 41 percent of total spending occurs after 2010 because federal and state agencies have limits on how fast they can spend the huge pile of cash. (Thus 41 percent of spending in the bill is certainly not short-term “stimulus” even if you believe in Keynesian theory).

What if special interest groups successfully lobby to extend all the new benefits and subsidies? One possibility would be that the 2010 funding level of $206 billion is extended permanently, as shown in Figure 2. Rather than the stimulus bill costing $546 billion through 2019, it would trigger spending totaling $2.2 trillion over the period.

In sum, here are the budget effects through 2019 of the stimulus nightmare scenario:

— Temporary tax cuts in the Senate bill: $292 billion

— Spending continued permanently at the 2010 level: $2.2 trillion

— Rough guess at the additional federal interest costs: $500 billion

— Total increase in federal debt under nightmare scenario: $3 trillion

Extending the (mainly useless) tax cuts in the stimulus package would make deficits even larger. And, of course, all this increase in debt would come on top of the debt piling up from financial industry bailouts and regular budget spending. It’s madness.