Stimulus signs

We doubt we were alone in feeling overwhelmed when we read the numbers Congress and President Obama were tossing around last winter during the debate about the federal stimulus package.

Even Bill Gates probably has to adjust his mental calculator when he’s confronted with, say, $787 billion.

That amount seems to us more a conceptual number — like the speed of light — than a real one.

But now tiny droplets of that monumental sum are trickling into places such as Baker County, and in denominations we can easily comprehend.

For instance: $113,000.

That’s how much the stimulus has supplied to the county’s summer youth work program.

Here’s another number: 45.

That’s the number of workers employed, making this summer’s group the program’s largest in more than a decade.

Besides the numbers, we can see the tangible results from this minuscule speck of the stimulus spending.

We can go to the businesses where program participants are working.

We can hike the trails they cleared of obstacles.

Equally important are the less obvious benefits: The work ethic and job skills the young people are gleaning and which will serve them, in some cases, for the rest of their lives.

In the next couple of years Baker County residents will notice other improvements for which the stimulus package picked up the tab: a smoother drive to Anthony Lakes, better-maintained trails in the Eagle Cap Wilderness and the Elkhorns, forests which are less susceptible to wildfires.

We still have reservations about the size of the stimulus package.

But despite our disappointment about its corpulence, we can’t ignore the package’s positive contributions to the country.

Putting a few dozen young people to work for the summer, completing tasks that help themselves and their neighbors, seems to us a valid use of the public wealth.

It’s too bad, though, that the government couldn’t have saved the $1.7 million it plowed into pig odor research.

Or better still, have sent the money to Baker County.

We could have given a job to every teenager who wanted one.