Washington Times columnist Diana West is troubled by President Obama's demand for $850 billion in new federal spending to get the U.S. economy moving again.

There's no evidence that massive government spending will boost the economy, West argues. And have we forgotten already how the $750 billion "bailout" Congress approved last fall has failed miserably?

From her latest column:

I found myself wondering how Ronald Reagan, entering office in 1981 with high inflation (12 percent) and unemployment (7.5 percent) higher than today (7.2 percent), and a contracting GDP approached hard times. In what turned out to be his first inaugural address, he, too, used the word "crisis" to describe "the economic ills" Americans were suffering. Noting that these ills were a long time coming and wouldn't go away "in days, weeks or months," he said: "But they will go away. They will go away because we, as Americans, have the capacity now, as we have had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom."

"In this present crisis," he continued, "government is not the solution to our problem."

There's a twist. In this present crisis, according to the Obama administration and its stimulus-package trillions, government isn't just the solution, it's our only hope.

That's change for you.

Read the full column at The Mercury Web site.