Herald Poll: Herald Poll: Utah Valley and Obama's budget

You're the head of a Utah Valley family with four kids and an income of $45,833 -- the local average. You've got a $185,000 mortgage that costs you $1,300 a month, plus credit card debt of $11,000 which requires a $250 a month payment. Your health insurance costs you $600 a month, and the house needs $2,000 in immediate repairs, and your daughter needs braces.

But that's close to what President Obama's proposed $3.6 trillion budget would do. It represents a crushing increase in the average U.S. household's share of the national debt, according the Congressional Budget Office. Worse, Obama's plan would continue to load debt onto Americans even after that glibly dismissed five-year span.

Obama defended his plan at a prime-time news conference on Tuesday, saying it will save the economy. The sums involved are not only staggeringly huge, but Obama admits that even $3.6 trillion is only the beginning. The administration actually proposes to spend (sit down before you read this) $13 trillion.

That's so mind-boggling that even many Democrats are flinching.

That deficit has to be paid by taxpayers, one way or another. Let's go back to that $48,000 in new debt for the average Utah Valley family. Rather than making that family more prosperous in the long run, won't this only make it poorer?

The common notion that any and all spending boosts the economy is simply false. Indiscriminate spending is not good; you have to spend on things that will pay you back. The wrong kind of economic activity is actually destructive, George Gilder writes in his book "Wealth & Poverty." A nation must use its resources to generate more wealth and new advances. If, however, it sinks its wealth into enterprises that consume more resources than they create, that nation will stagnate and decline.

That's what critics say the Obama agenda is set to do. The president claimed Tuesday that the economy can boom if we "invest" in renewable sources of energy, education and health care. But critics say his plans are classic "money pits" that will devour America's resources.

Take renewable energy. The prospect of wind and solar power is encouraging in the long run, but these technologies simply cannot produce much power in the short or medium term. Nuclear reactors, by contrast, have 2 million times the energy density of fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are again about 10 times as dense as wind or solar. Multiply it out and nuclear power gives you and energy efficiency factor of 20 million.

If anything, the nation needs new nuclear power plants in abundance, but Obama is not a fan of nuclear power.

To spend billions of taxpayers money in a quest to drive renewables beyond their logical capacity, given the state of the art today, is to waste a colossal amount of the taxpayers' money.

Moreover, the administration is already on a path that will hamper efforts to further develop traditional energy sources (note the rejections of Utah oil shale leases). Instead it is likely to impose expensive "greenhouse" standards in the name of human health.

A draft finding by the Environmental Protection Agency, sent a few days ago to a receptive White House, labels carbon dioxide a danger to public welfare. This labeling opens the way for the agency to regulate carbon dioxide emissions in the name of pollution control, thereby bypassing Congress since human health is already part of the EPA's mandate.

Nobody's for an environment made dirtier than necessary, but if you think a broad swipe at carbon dioxide won't hurt the economy, think again. Unreasonable standards could put many large businesses under, and they've already begun to howl.

Questions arise also with Obama's education plans. While there are ways to improve education -- for example, by adopting the computerized instruction innovations proposed by Harvard (via BYU) professor Clayton Christensen -- that would require a frontal assault on the education bureaucracy. Obama has shown no stomach for that.

Taxpayer dollars will likely be spent to maintain what schools are doing now, not to innovate for higher performance. In other words, the money could be burned in a big bonfire outside the Capitol and have the same effect. On second thought, bonfires can be inspiring.

The president has also touted how nationalized health care would revive the economy. Let's pause to give you time to recover from laughing. Take your time because laughter is good medicine that will likely outperform the current Obama proposal. As many note, the nations of Europe all have government-run health care, and their economies are in worse shape than ours.

That's why our typical Utah Valley family's $48,000 of new debt over five years is raising so many eyebrows. If the critics are right, the money will be thrown away on energy, education and health care boondoggles.

In addition, this family would be hurt because Obama's plans would only hinder growth in a broader sense. Economist John Maynard Keynes said the health of an economy rests upon the business community's "animal spirits" -- its drive, optimism and willingness to take risks. Obama, however, may be dumping a big bucket of ice water on those vital energies.

At least, that's what his critics say.