Shopping to help the economy is just so, you know, stimulating

So then, have you pre-stimulated the economy by spending that promised $600 rebate?

Let's be more than good Americans, who will dutifully use our rebates on new washing machines or other big-ticket items, and spend it now. We'll use the rebate checks for that credit-card debt, right? Though the accrued interest means we'll come up a little short.

Am I the only one queasy when thinking about yet another reactionary solution to yet another stock-market slowdown?

The House last week passed along a plan that would give $600 to people making at least $35,000 a year, with another $300 for each kid in a family, whether one or two people head the family. Americans who make a lot more or less than $35,000 a year would get different amounts, though unmarried individuals who make more than $100,000 might not get anything.

This week, the Senate will churn out its version and it seems pretty likely that millions of Americans will get a check sometime this spring, though no one knows for sure when — the IRS already will be busy mailing out regular tax refunds. In all of this, will the unemployed get benefits for a longer period of time, or will the poor get more food stamps? Whatever happens, most of us are already watching the mailbox.

Pardon me while I hyperventilate, but this fix feels like one last bag of Oreos before we go on a diet to lose 100 pounds. As we munch, our house values continue to shrink, our interest still has to be paid and the poor still have to worry about affording warm shoes or a bag of groceries. Munch, munch.

Saving jobs — which some say is a goal of the stimulus package that so far also includes tax incentives for businesses — is a good thing, yes. I can think of three emotional tsunamis I'd never wish on a person: death of a child, a terminal illness and the loss of a job. Deep breath.

At root, however, this package relies on public debt to stimulate an economy seizing up because of insupportable debt. The U.S. government will borrow money from China to give money to us so we can spend it on products made in China. We're not buying American? According to an oft-cited statistic: "During the 2001 recession, 18 percent of what Americans spent on food and manufactured goods was imported, according to the Commerce Department. By 2006, the share had risen to 21 percent."

Can we just put a match to this financial shanty and save ourselves the interest payments?

Missing in the screaming reports about the coming, looming, blooming recession are the critics of tax rebates. I found one, in two paragraphs, in a New York Times story — a libertarian who says government needs to back out and let the market take its course.

"The economy is working these things out," David R. Henderson, a libertarian economist at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, said in The New York Times. "We've got the housing crisis and the subprime, and all these things take a while to settle. The government just doesn't have the discipline to kind of let things work out."

I don't want to lose my house or my job, but is putting $600 in our pockets going to fix things in the long-term? (I've got to be honest: $300 a kid certainly sweetens things up a bit, doesn't it?) This happened in 2001, and here we are again in 2008, with a lot of bloated stock portfolios deflating in between.

The government is giving us money, in part, because we have stopped spending. So then, here's what we need to do: Use the rebate to pay down our debt. Slap it on a credit card or put it in an emergency-only savings account and then maybe they'll give us more, yes?

Sorry if I sound cynical. I think I'll go shopping.

Better yet, I'm taking the kids to Disneyland. Yes, I will spend more than my rebate; yes, I will eat at restaurants, take taxis and tip waiters, porters and baggage handlers so they stay employed; and, yes, I will buy at least three overpriced souvenirs made in China.

I promise.