Vice President-elect Joe Biden says that the incoming Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats are close to a deal on the biggest taxpayer giveaway extravaganza in history:

In recent days, government sources have talked about moving a bill through Congress next month with a price tag in the range of $675 billion to $775 billion over two years.

Others have speculated on a somewhat larger overall expenditure to pay for road and bridge rebuilding, investments in mass transit systems, middle-class tax cuts and expanded aid for states and the poor.

Reacting to the worsening economy, which the government on Tuesday said shrank by an annual rate of 0.5 percent in the third quarter, Biden noted that the incoming administration has had to raise its job-creation goals to 3 million, from earlier projections of 2.5 million, over the next two years.

"We don't think it's going to require any significantly larger increase in investment to do that," Biden said.

In upbeat comments about the outlook for the stimulus legislation Congress will consider when it convenes on January 6, Biden said: "It's clear that we're all on the same page, including our Republican colleagues" on the need for a "substantial" bill to create jobs.

"We're all getting very close to an overall number and we're getting close to the specific kinds of investment," Biden said.

We've already spent nearly $8 trillion in bailouts, what's another trillion dollars, give or take?

Here's the problem (besides the obvious one that taking a trillion dollars out of the economy and redistributing it to Obama's labor buddies won't help the economy much at all). We are using a nuclear bomb to kill a mosquito.

Here's Obama economic advisor Lawrence Summers:

Obama's chief White House economic advisor, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, told reporters that without action, "we will almost certainly face the worst economic downturn since the Second World War."

We've now gone from "the worst economic crisis in history" through "the worst economic crisis since the depression" to today's judgment that this is the worst economic crisis "since the end of World War II."

We are about to destroy the free market system and the economy for the political gain of the Democrats. No one is asking - least of all timid Republicans - is a trillion dollars really necessary? Can we get by with half that? A third? Is the GOP simply going to cave on this issue as they have caved on bailouts?

Apparently so. And the fact that hundreds of billions of dollars will be funneled to organized labor in the form of "infrastructure" jobs thus filling their coffers and increasing their ability to help fund Democratic candidates stinks to high heaven of pure, power politics and not a plan to help "stimulate" anything - except perhaps the loyalty of voters to the Democrats.

Republicans won't mind those billions pouring into their districts. Their seats will be safe, at least in their mind. Republican leader Boehner mumbled something about tax cuts for certain businesses but beyond that, we hear hardly a whimper as our future is mortgaged so that Democrats will maintain a monopoly of power in Washington after buying off the American people with a few thousand dollars in free money.

Gird your loins, folks. The prospect of Democrats crowing that they have saved the economy while Republicans grovel for scraps just might be enough to destroy the GOP as a viable party for the foreseeable future.