Matt Yglesias

Reps Bachmann and Hoekstra Continue to Foster “Global Currency” Conspiracy Theories

Representative Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) continues to fight the good fight against the plan to replace the United States dollar with a new global currency. It’s true that there is no such plan, but her bill to ban the Treasury Department from implementing it already has 31 co-sponsors. And Dave Weigel reports that non-cosponsor Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) might be getting on the bandwagon:

“I’m watching Neil Cavuto,” said Hoesktra, “and I see [Treasury Secretary] Tim Geithner is talking about how he might be OK with a world currency. I don’t think Americans are going to be comfortable with that. You’re going to see things that people perceive as eroding American sovereignty—this is something that’s clearly un-American. I mean, here’s the secretary of the Treasury, and instead of defending the United States and defending our currency, he’s saying he might be open to a world currency. What does that mean? It means turning our currency over to the UN.”

For the millionth time, the proposal under discussion was for other countries—i.e., not the United States—to start moving away from near-exclusive use of the dollar as a reserve currency. This has nothing to do with American sovereignty or the United Nations. And, again, neither congress nor the Treasury Department can force other countries to use the dollar as a reserve asset.

Members of the opposition might want to consider spending more time figuring out what their budget proposals say and less time pushing weird conspiracy theories.

One Man’s Pork is Another Man’s Vital Local Project

I think we all understand the dynamic by which the earmark for your district is a wasteful boondoggle, whereas the earmark for my district is addressing serious problems in a concrete way. But the way this game is supposed to work is that we both vote for the bill since we’re both more interested in claiming credit for our own project than we are in complaining about each other’s projects.

It’s win-win, basically, though it does result in a structural misallocation of funds toward regions that happen to have politically powerful elected officials.

With the stimulus bill, though, the opposition (mostly Republicans, but but Democrats too) perfected a new approach to this. First the denounced the whole thing as unnecessary wasteful spending. Then they all voted against it. Then many members turned around, went home, and started bragging about all the good stuff they’d brought home to their district. Now it seems that Reps. Pete Hoekstra and Mario Diaz-Balert are up to the same tricks with the omnibus appropriations bill.

It’s not surprising, I guess; having gotten away with this once in the future probably everyone will be doing it.