Ben Stein: Half of Stimulus Goes to Unions

Columnist Ben Stein has taken a close look at President Barack Obama's proposed $820 billion stimulus package, and made some eye-opening discoveries.

Writing for Spectator.com and NYPost.com, Stein calculates that:

• The House of Representatives debated the bill for eight hours, or roughly $102 billion per hour.

• Only 10 percent of the stimulus funds would be spent in 2009.

• Almost half of the $820 billion would end up in the pockets of Democratic-controlled unions, such as the Service Employees International Union, and federal, state, and municipal employee unions.

• At 680 pages long, neither Obama nor any member of the House had enough time to read the entire bill before the House voted.

• The $820 billion would be enough to give every unemployed American $75,000.

Says Stein: "There has been pork-barrel politics since there has been politics, but the scale of this pork is beyond what had ever been imagined before -- and no one can be sure it will actually do much stimulation. ... This has been a punch in the solar plexus to the kind of responsible, far-seeing, mature government processes that are needed to protect America."