Compared to Obama, Clinton was a Piker.

The Senate version of President Obama's shamulus debt package is now valued at more than $920 billion, an incredible $100 billion more costly than the House-passed version. The difference between these two proposals is five times larger than the entire fiscal stimulus proposed by Bill Clinton in 1993, which was blocked then by Senate Republicans largely because it was deemed too costly.

By today's standards Clinton's $16 billion package seems precious and quaint. Sixteen billion dollars is about one-sixtieth of the amount of the current Senate bill. Sixteen billion is not much more than the amount in the current proposal allocated for changing lightbulbs, washing windows and retro-greening Federal buildings. Sixteen billion dollars is 25% less than the amount of money allocated in the current package to preparing for universal healthcare, and about equal to the amount of money in the current bill for alternative energy tax cuts and credits.

Indeed, the "cumulus" is loaded up with liberal pet causes that have nothing to do with boosting the economy. The Democrats know this, which is why they are trying to shoulder the bill through both houses of Congress before it begins to stink like three-day-old fish. But worse than not stimulating anything other than the man-glands of liberal appropriaters, the spending orgy would inflict real damage to the economy and our polity.

This huge amount of money will be used to grease the wheels of local special-interest politics, funding thousands of projects of questionable value, projects that were unaffordable during the best economic times and are even less affordable now. But thats not the worst of it.

This is not some merely bad budget-busting appropriations bill or political payoff. This is an unprecedented raping of the full faith and credit of this nation. The package will lead either to runaway inflation or a true debt crisis, or both. While the spending is a matter of fiscal policy, the implications are monetary.

Lets face it: the government will have no choice but to raise the yields on U.S. Treasury notes and bonds in order to attract foreign lenders. This is problematic at a time when the government is trying to spur economic activity by driving yields down. If yields don't rise there won't be enough foreign buyers for the debt, and then we'll simply keep printing money. Either way in a year or two massive inflation is the likely result, choking off any recovery that might take hold.

Far more serious is a looming currency crisis. Eventually the U.S. will have to default on its debt or cheapen the dollar in order to wipe the debt off of its books, because there will never be enough tax revenue to pay the interest on its obligations, much less the principal. The dollar will be in tatters, as will our reputation in global financial and political markets. The world will then really have cause to hate us.

If that happens Don Rumsfeld's thumbing his nose at Old Europe will seem like the good old days.