As President-elect Barack Obama prepares his economic stimulus package, his advisers are looking into inserting a "Buy American" plank. An Obama spokesperson told Bloomberg that "We are reviewing the buy American proposal and we are committed to a plan that will save or create 3 million jobs, including jobs in manufacturing."

Earlier this week, I wrote about the fallacy of job creation and "job saving." It sounds nice politically but it is, in aggregate, bad policy.

The Bloomberg piece contains a number of quotes from participants that are troubling. Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen said that "we obviously want to focus our investments in areas where American industry will benefit." Van Hollen added that the stimulus is aimed at "generating American jobs."

Here's the thing: Taxpayer money should be used for the benefit of the taxpayers, and projects and infrastructure investments should be chosen based on their merit -- with job creation as a side effect.

Taking an enormous amount of money and spending it unnecessarily to create jobs while simultaneously enhancing the waste with a "Buy American" provision is just a bad idea. It would be a bad idea if we had the money and it's even worse because we don't.