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?

This past presidential election I voted libertarian; not really because of Bob Barr individually, but because of the policies and agenda of the libertarians. There's a great commentary on CNN.com from a Harvard economics lecturer named Jeffrey Miron. He lays out the government actions that should be undertaken from a libertarian perspective to improve the economy. Not surprisingly, these mostly involve eliminating government action.

What is important to note is the reality that the policies and ideology of today's libertarian party is practically identical to that of the republican party a generation or two ago. It's easy for one to miss this point, as focus is generally on the two major parties and the differences between them. It's easy to lose track of how far left the republican party has veered, when the democrats have moved much further left. Both remain relatively different, yet both have moved leftward in absolute terms.

What this means for us is that the two major parties are today advocating policies that have a track record of failure. In Washington D.C. today, the democrats and republicans are fighting over details in what is nothing more than a spending bill. To be more accurate, a bill that will confiscate private property from the wealth-creating individuals of this country and put it in control of an entity (the government) that spends much more than it takes in. It is not some radical "theory" that the government does not grow wealth, it is a historically proven fact.

The republicans in the two houses of Congress are supporting a bill that can be classified as moderately socialistic, while the democrats support full-blown Marxism in theirs. Either one is a recipe for failure. Once again, all you have to do is put the proposals in historical perspective to see the unintended consequences that they bring and which have never been avoided.

Barack Obama repeatedly tells us that swift action is necessary or else the economy may never recover. Really? Based on a careful study of the history of the United States, you will find that the road to becoming the most prosperous and opportunity-filled country in the history of earth did not come as a result of central planners commanding our economy, but rather individuals being free to choose what's best for themselves. Other countries tried to one-up us by following the visions of the select few, and failed miserably.

All I want is for an honest discussion of the merits of central planners directing the economy. There's a lot of history behind this method. There is one simple question that is absent: what evidence is there that we will have a different result?

The latest from Obama on the "stimulus" package naysayers included this assessment...

"These criticisms echo the very same failed economic theories that led us into this crisis in the first place -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can ignore fundamental challenges like energy independence and the high cost of health care; that we can somehow deal with this in a piecemeal fashion and still expect our economy and our country to thrive."

Obama contends that an economic policy solely of tax cuts got us where we are today. How accurate is this statement? Virtually nobody would be in disagreement that the severity of our current downturn was fast-tracked by the housing bubble. The cause of our housing problems was the government deciding they wanted to try their hand at increasing homeownership. It was the government (Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and their fellow ideologues) who made Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's primary responsibility to create and buy unconventional loans for people who the private industry otherwise had determined were uncreditworthy. The "Wall Street Greed" that everyone points to is secondary, if not irrelevant, when considering that private enterprise did not get the ball rolling when it comes to credit giveaways for those who were previously denied.

Circle back to Obama's statement that a policy of tax cuts alone is what got us here. This rhetoric swiftly ignores the reality of what the housing crisis meant to this economic downturn, and avoids discussion of the cascading events that led up to it. Those who are responsible for screwing up the housing market with their selfish, vote-mongering, unsustainable fantasy of putting people in homes they can't afford are getting off scot-free.

What problem in our economy can be linked to tax cuts? Who ever spent less money after having their tax burden decreased? What company ever cut their workforce as a result of lowered corporate tax rates?

What we are experiencing now is the superior abilities of politicians at their worst. If Obama and the Democrats get their way, this will go down as the most opportunistic power grab and concession of economic freedom that our country has ever seen. They very well may get their way, based on their successful squashing of independent thought. Obama is making the rules now. He is telling everyone that "tax cuts alone" are what dug this hole, and we can only be saved if we do what he says. And everyone is listening.

What we are missing is an honest discussion of the merits of what's on the table. Central planners attempting to direct an economy through borrowing, spending, and telling people what to produce and what to buy has a long history dating back to the ancient times. Why isn't this information being considered front and center?