Obama's Keynesian Plans For More Waste

Via Alex Tabarrok I see the following funny paragraph in a New York Times article about Obama's new planned massive spending increases:

"Mr. Obama also responded to criticism of waste and inefficiency in such programs by promising new spending rules, like a requirement that states act quickly to invest in roads and bridges or sacrifice federal money."

That is almost hysterically funny because there is no better way to insure waste and inefficiency than implementing a "use it or lose it" rule for money sent to any state or agency or department.

Someone in Tabarrok's comment section claimed that Obama didn't mean for this rule to be used to prevent waste, but to speed up implementation, and that the comment on waste and efficiency was said in another context. Perhaps that is so (I haven't listened to Obama's speech), but even if it is so it should be noted that this rule nevertheless makes Obama's talk of wanting to counteract waste and inefficiency self-satirical.

It should further be noted that waste is in fact something that Keynesians (which include Obama and his associates and supporters) welcome. After all, waste is a form of spending too, and J.M. Keynes himself made this proposal in his General Theory:

"If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with bank-notes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal-mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is."