The new federal economic stimulus package is sitting in the Senate right now, and if passed, could result in California getting billions of dollars.

This $819 billion plan comes just in time for California. The state could net around $32 billion, which is intended for things like schools, highways, bridges and Medicaid. Being in a state that is looking at a nearly $42 billion budget deficit, this would seem like great news.

But there is a downside to all of this free money coming our way. Borrowing $819 billion would cause the worldwide worth of our dollar to take a big hit. And for what?

This so-called “economic stimulus” is nothing but an excuse for the government to pump billions of dollars into its own programs, according to Congressman Ron Paul’s weekly column on his website.

“There is a lot of stimulus and growth in this bill – that is, of government,” he wrote. “Nothing in this bill stimulates the freedom and prosperity of the American people.”

This brings up an excellent point. The average American citizen has yet to receive even the slightest advantage from any of the hundreds of billions of dollars that the federal government has been giving out for the past year.

Even worse, as our government spends hundreds of billions of dollars to supposedly help its people, the average man and woman have to deal with a devaluing of our currency.

Eventually, America has to acknowledge the fact that all of this money, all of this so-called “stimulus,” is nothing more than the government funding its own self-interest. These bailouts and economic stimulus packages are weakening the value of our dollar, and the money is not reaching the people who are supposed to benefit.

In fact, some of the programs in the stimulus package may even diminish our right to privacy. The proposed stimulus package includes a $20 billion allocation to create a national system of medical record keeping, “which allows government and state-favored special interests to see medical records at will,” Paul wrote.

Yes, it is hard to turn down $32 billion, especially when our state could use the money. But there have to be better ways of supporting California – and America as a whole, than these economic stimulus packages that are not actually going to stimulate the economy.

David Loret de Mola can be reached at [email protected]