First the federal government needs to admit they have done a terrible job managing our nation’s affairs. Out-of-control deficit spending and a regulation policy that can be summed up as "see no evil, hear no evil" have left us deep in debt, with a dollar that is historically weak, and have indicated to the rest of the world that their investment dollars should be directed elsewhere. Until we identify, acknowledge, and then learn from our mistakes we will be doomed repeat them.

Now that we as a nation are deep in debt and in deep trouble, I do not want to see Congress hand out another few tens of billions of small checks directly to consumers. The first give-away did no real economic good, and only dug us $106 billion deeper in debt.

If we must dig our government deeper in debt to stimulate the economy (having this as an option was the reason we shouldn’t have been living beyond our means to begin with these last 8 years,) let’s invest in repairing our aging national infrastructure (sewers, bridges, etc..) Let’s invest in making the enormous number of government buildings more energy efficient so we will save on energy costs in the future (spend a dime to save a dollar while jump-starting conservation and renewable energy industries.) But let's not borrow any more money from China to distribute small checks to consumers which will be blown at Wal-Mart to buy Japanese TV sets.