One of the last acts of the Bush administration was to give loans of $13.4 billion and $4 billion to General Motors and Chrysler, respectively, to save them from formally acknowledging their condition—bankruptcy. As the terms of their bailouts require, they recently submitted plans for regaining viability. The two plans say survival requires another $22 billion, which will tide the companies over until they need to be tided over again. GM's plan assumes that by 2014 Americans will be buying 18.3 million vehicles a year—500,000 more than the record set in 2000. It also assumes that GM, which has been losing market share almost constantly since the 1970s, will continue to do so for six years.

Chrysler's plan assumes 2014 sales of no more than 13 million. Cerberus, the private-equity company that owns 80 percent of Chrysler, has scores of billions to invest but instead is seeking more government money and a lifeline from Fiat, which will not put up any of its money until American taxpayers put up even more of theirs.

Bank of America now has a market capitalization less than half the value of the public money ($45 billion) it has received since October. Citigroup, too, is worth much less than has been pumped into it since then. American International Group's projected 2008 losses (more than $100 billion) are approaching 100 times its current market value. Deemed "too big to fail," it is failing in spite of $150 billion from the government.

The stimulus legislation, a.k.a. No Social Worker Left Behind, offers financial incentives for states to enlarge their welfare rolls. This looks like the beginning of a semi-stealthy repeal of the 1996 welfare reform. So it goes, as government, with a confidence disconnected from its current performance, toils to make more and more people more and more dependent on it.

In one wee particular, congressional Democrats want to shrink government. At the behest of the teachers' unions, the $410 billion omnibus spending bill dooms a $14 million (a rounding error on GM's bailout) scholarship program that enables 1,800 children, mostly low-income and minorities, to escape the District of Columbia's catastrophic public schools. But sinking this lifeboat for the poor serves liberalism's dependency agenda: No poor child left outside the government's education plantation.

Addressing Congress last week, the president said he is strengthening government "not because I believe in bigger government—I don't." Chant it, everybody: Yes you do.

© 2009