The cheer from one corner of the energy debate during ’08 Presidential campaign was “drill baby drill!”  It appears that the cheer from the Obama team, we can’t lump all Dems in this one yet, in the deficit debate is “grow baby grow!”  The negative long term impact on a proposal like this is huge.  Once you hand out entitlements to folks, getting them off the wagon is next to impossible.  You create an entire new way of mobilizing folks politically…hmmm…Who get’s rooked on this deal – the states.  Who get’s to solve this problem – the states.  From the Wall Street Journal:

President-elect Barack Obama plans to offer states $7 billion as incentive to permanently change their unemployment-insurance laws to cover part-time workers and prevent other laid-off workers from falling through cracks in the coverage.

The proposal, which is set to be included in the president-elect’s two-year economic-stimulus plan, will seek to use short-term aid to cash-strapped states to force long-term changes that the Obama team believes are overdue, Obama aides said Tuesday.

But the proposal, along with others to subsidize health insurance for the laid-off and expand Medicaid to out-of-work Americans, are sparking bipartisan concern over the potential, long-term impact on a federal budget deficit that is expected to hit $1 trillion this year, even before the stimulus plan.

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