As the great fleecing of our future known as the stimulus package debate rages on, some huge questions keep getting dodged: how will it be funded, and how will we pay it back? Today was Obama's first press conference as president, and neither of those questions was presented. Afterward, I listened to a number of political commentators give their take on the press conference and the stimulus arguments. Donald Trump somehow ended up on one of these shows, and was asked directly where the trillion dollars would come from and how it would be repaid. He had no answer for those questions, and ended up on a tangent about how we shouldn't have gone into Iraq because they didn't fly the planes into the World Trade Center, and that a continued presence in Afghanistan was equally as undesirable. Regardless of the merits of those thoughts, it had nothing to do with the question he was asked. Unfortunately, this is the kind of reply that is given when the tough questions about the stimulus package are posed.

The government gets its hands on huge amounts of money (other than collecting taxes) by selling Treasury notes and bonds to domestic and foreign investors, with China being the most prominent foreign investor these days. They have enough cash (for now) to buy up a lot of our debt. So that's one way to raise money. Another way is to print money. Based on my limited knowledge of how government finances itself, that's how I expect the stimulus package will be paid for.

This sets us up for major risk. The securities sold to China will eventually mature and the government will then have to pay up, including interest. Gross Domestic Product and tax revenues better have skyrocketed by this time or else there will be hell to pay. The government will then have to resort to an unprecedented level of taxation, while concurrently slashing spending. In short, there will be real misery that those of us who have lived here our entire lives cannot imagine.

Likewise, much risk comes along with printing money. If dumping newly printed money into the financial system does not immediately get cash flowing and global trading partners buying our goods and services, we will have inflation coupled with a stalled economy. Everyone's dollar will buy less.

To sum it all up, those who wrote this stimulus package are making a huge bet that central planners can borrow a trillion dollars, create demand where there currently is no demand, and hope that it is in line with the true needs of free people. The big problem with this hope is that throughout history it has failed to work. Each and every one of the 300 million individuals in this country has a unique sets of needs and demands. There has never been a central authority that could successfully command the economy to fulfill so many varying sets of demands. That reality, in essence, is why capitalism succeeds and socialism/communism fails. Every time.

Giving central planners the power to direct an economy to prosperity hasn't worked going back to ancient civilizations all the way to modern times. Nobody is being required to explain "here's what's different now, and here's why it will work this time." Nobody is being held responsible for explaining how the inescapable realities are going to be avoided this go around. And nobody is giving us an exit plan.

After 6 years of bashing Bush for not having an Iraq exit strategy, Obama and the democrats are about to have authority to potentially ruin our economy for decades to come without being held to the same standard. Where is the continuity of thinking? Was there anything at all genuine in regards to their criticism of the lack of an exit strategy from Iraq? It looks more and more like supporting evidence and a complete plan are only required if the idea is coming from the other side of the fence. Fear seems to be the substitute of choice for Obama. With each delay of the stimulus we are warned that the potential catastrophe will be the worst since [insert historical calamity here]. This also sounds awfully familiar. Didn't the left complain that the War on Terror and the rush to invade Iraq were all predicated on mass fear hysteria?