No Couch Potato Left Behind

George Will has a great column on a new, and frankly unbelievable, entitlement program brought to you by your Republican congress:

Feeling, evidently, flush with (other people's) cash, the Senate has concocted a novel way to spend $3 billion: create a new entitlement. The Senate has passed — and so has the House, with differences — an entitlement to digital television.

If this filigree on the welfare state becomes law, everyone who owns old analog television sets — everyone from your Aunt Emma in her wee apartment to the millionaire in the neighborhood McMansion who has such sets in the maid's room and the guest house — will get subsidies to pay for making those sets capable of receiving digital signals.

[...]

The $990 million House version of this entitlement — call it No Couch Potato Left Behind — is (relatively) parsimonious: Consumers would get vouchers worth only $40 and would be restricted to a measly two vouchers per household. The Senate's more spacious entitlement would pay for most of the cost — $50 to $60 — of the converter boxes. But there is Republican rigor in this: Consumers would be required to pay $10. That is the conservatism in compassionate conservatism.

I have three analog TVs, but thanks to DirecTV, I get a crystal clear digital picture. However, under the government's program, I'll be entitled to compensation for each of those TVs, even though I don't need it.

I wonder how many people will run out to the nearest Goodwill and grab all the analog sets they can find in order to maximize their Federal benefit. Could be a real profit center.

Your government tax dollars at work.