Hasty action on economy tempts fate

WASHINGTON — The other day Sen. Patty Murray got a call from Barack Obama, urging her to back the bank bailout as well as his other plans to jump-start the economy.

She told him how worried she was that Boeing had announced it was laying off 4,500 workers.

"I hear you," Obama said, according to Murray. "What I'm trying to do is prevent 20,000 more job cuts at Boeing. To do that I need all the tools at my disposal."

Murray told me this story in her Capitol Hill office last week. Outside, giddy inaugural crowds roamed the streets. Inside Congress, it felt like the brink of an apocalypse.

Around the Capitol I heard phrases such as "financial Armageddon." "Mass layoffs." "A society that's imploding."

And from Congressman Jim McDermott, D-Seattle: "Congress flying blind."

These days McDermott is the fourth-ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee. He is writing a section of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the economic-stimulus package.

At $825 billion — and rising — it is the most expensive piece of legislation in U.S. history.

The goal is to help people who already are hurting from the economic meltdown, as well as to fuel the economy with tax cuts and massive new spending on roads, energy projects and aid to the states.

McDermott said he favors the idea. But he also described a Congress hastily crafting bills in "closed committee rooms by a handful of people in near-total secrecy."

"Is this an extraordinary way to write a piece of legislation?" he asked. "Absolutely it is. The chances for making mistakes right now are very high.

"You've got a lot of people walking around up here feeling very uncomfortable."

Count me in that crowd.

I get that these are dicey times. When even Microsoft is laying people off, we've got major trouble.

But as the celebration of last week subsides, I'm left with another feeling: that this is a most dangerous time in Washington.

Government is rising. It feels like the federal government right now is the only growth industry we have left.

There is almost no check on the power of Obama and the Democrats. They can do most anything they want, for a time.

And, at least at first, they have made clear they are going to try to spend, spend, spend their way out of this crisis. Regardless of the balance sheet.

Remember when Dick Cheney said "deficits don't matter?" He's gone, but the method remains. The stimulus bill will drive the federal budget deficit this year to nearly $2 trillion — as much red ink in one year as Bush and Cheney racked up in the prior seven combined.

Are they sure they know what they're doing?

"You're right to be skeptical," said Congressman Adam Smith, D-Tacoma. "But what are we supposed to do, curl up in the fetal position and do nothing? We've got two bad choices, and the do-nothing choice is worse."

Smith said he is frustrated by "let it fail" arguments. He says if he had voted against the bank bailout last fall he would have been guilty of "legislative malpractice." Bottom line is that the $700 billion bailout, flaws and all, has succeeded in stopping the banking system from collapsing, he said.

"In my twelve years in Congress, best vote I've ever taken," Smith said.

Murray agreed.

"Just saying no is not an option," she said. "We have to act. We have to have faith that something will work."

I mention to McDermott that the mood reminds me of right after 9/11. Wounded, we felt so strongly we had to act that we ended up making some epic mistakes.

He said the difference is Democrats are not so bullheaded.

"I follow the philosophy of FDR," he said. "Which is that we have to try something, but if it doesn't work we'll stop it and try something else."

Smith said it's not like money is going to be just shoveled out the door. Most of it is going to "ideas and programs that have been around for years and are known to create jobs," such as highway construction.

Still, the enormous size of the budget deficits being created is experimental, he said. This year's deficit could exceed 12 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, obliterating the post-World War II record of 6 percent set in 1983. How much that will be a drag on the economy or cripple the government going ahead isn't known.

But shouldn't there at least be a plan for how we are going to pay it off?

Like everyone, I hope these trillion-dollar experiments work. But hope isn't enough. This is so big that both citizens and the press need to set aside all those good feelings of last week and turn into watchdogs but quick.

Because making good laws usually takes time. And that's the one thing they're saying in Washington they've run out of.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.