Blowing up over volcanoes

One of the most irksome practices during the stimulus package debate was the perpetual nitpicking of line items by the GOP to try and point out all the “wastefulness” of the stimulus (never mind that spending is stimulus in the first place). 

What made it particularly bad was both that it exemplified GOP misunderstanding (intentional or not) of the value of the items under criticism, and as often as not it was a misrepresentation of what was in the package.

Both fine traditions were on display in Gov. Bobby Jindal’s response to Obama’s address to Congress last night. 

But Democratic leaders in Congress rejected this approach.  Instead of trusting us to make wise decisions with our own money, they passed the largest government spending bill in history – with a price tag of more than $1 trillion with interest.  While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a ‘magnetic levitation’ line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called ‘volcano monitoring.’  Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, DC.

I can’t speak to the “new cars for government,” though certainly it seems like a useful way to funnel money into the car industry (as in, we’ll actually get cars for it, rather than layoff plans), and if we’re replacing older cars, it will most likely mean improved fleet mileage for the government, also a good investment.

The Las Vegas rail project line has already been debunked (no such plans are identified, and no such specific earmark exists) — though, again, not only does it sound like something that would employ people, but which could serious reduce vehicular traffic to Vegas from the LA area, which reduces highway spending and, yes, fuel usage. 

The volcano one, though, surely got the most laughs around the GOP speech-writing table when it was pitched. But, again, it’s mocking something quite serious, and it’s a wild distortion of, y’know, reality.

First off, volcano monitoring is actually a Good Thing — and a good investment, too.

Ignoring for the sake of argument the value of the basic science that always results from the data collected during routine monitoring – ignoring the general function of increased spending as an economic stimulus to the nation’s earth scientists, instrument manufacturers, etc., – even ignoring all that, volcano monitoring is still a very sensible investment in national security. A $1.5 million investment in monitoring at Pinatubo (near a U.S. air force base) earned a greater than 300-fold return when the volcano erupted explosively in 1991: hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property (mostly airplanes) was saved, as were thousands of lives. That 30,000% figure comes before you attempt to put a value on human life.

Sure, not all investments will have such a payoff – or at least, we really hope that not all of the volcanoes we monitor will erupt explosively and damagingly on us. But even smaller puffs pose a considerable risk. For example, volcano monitoring is vital to aviation safety (you can think of an ash cloud as a swarm of tiny shards of glass out to ruin any jet engines it finds).

And we’re not just talking about distant volcanoes in the Philippines. There are major volcanoes in the Cascades, near podunk towns like Seattle and Portland (Mount St Helens, anyone), not to mention in Hawaii and Alaska.

Secondly, the stimulus bill says no such thing.

US Geological Survey

For an additional amount for ”Surveys, Investigations, and Research”, $140,000,000, for repair, construction and restoration of facilities; equipment replacement and upgrades including stream gages, and seismic and volcano monitoring systems; national map activities; and other critical deferred maintenance and improvement projects.

Yeah, there’s volcano monitoring in there (snicker snicker, I guess), but it’s just one part of the spending, including earthquake monitoring (why no laughs over that one, Bobby?), mapping, and basically spending money on stuff that the USGS has been underfunded on for decades. 

It’s fine to debate what the nature of economic stimulus should be — taxes, spending, amounts and combinations thereof. And certainly we should be having discussions over the actual things being spent upon (or the impacts of the taxes being reduced), etc.

But, at the risk of sounding terribly naive, wouldn’t it be nice if the discussion was held on the merits, honestly and openly, rather than distorting facts (lying) and playing points for yocks (mocking)? I know, I’m talking crazy here, but, yeah, it’s a dream I have …