Granted, he wants the additional spending to be on infrastructure which isn’t necessarily objectionable, but the idea that any sort of government spending can stimulate the economy - or even the idea that we should want to create jobs through government spending - is utter bunk.

Washington – In a Senate hearing today focused on the nation’s ailing economy, Senator Kent Conrad called for a new economic stimulus package, including significant infrastructure investment, and linked to a bipartisan process to address the long-term budget outlook.

“Clearly the economy is struggling and we still have a lot of work to do,” Senator Conrad said.  “We need to quickly enact an economic stimulus package focused on funding ‘ready-to-go’ and near-term infrastructure projects.  This would have the multiple benefits of creating jobs, kick-starting economic growth now, and improving our long-term economic efficiency by repairing our country’s crumbling infrastructure.”

That’s from a Conrad press release, just in case you weren’t able to tell the difference between one of those and an article in, say, The Fargo Forum.

Anyway, conservatives are really digging themselves a hole when they let liberals like Conrad lump government spending packages under the umbrella of “economic stimulus.” Let’s remember that there is only two things government can do to stimulate the economy in a long-term, meaningful way: A) Reduce tax burden and B) Reduce regulatory burdens.

Over the next years, as the economy suffers under the inevitable tax hikes and regulatory expansions Obama and the Democrats will pass, we’ll likely be hearing a lot about “economic stimulus” from people like Conrad.  But really all they’re trying to do is re-brand their big-government, tax-and-spend ways to make them sound like supply side economics while not actually being supply-side economics.

It’s a convenient bit of sleight of hand for people who have every intention keeping Americans as yoked up to the big government wagon as possible.