"O Stimulus Tree, O Stimulus Tree, how heavy are your branches."

Day by day, hour by hour, the stimulus package that is supposed to jump-start the nation's economy and bring us out of recession becomes increasingly laden with the wish lists of mayors and governors across the country.

Instead of saving us, this lineup of pork and special projects can only break us and burden us and our children with a massive debt that will one day require an accounting.

Nothing is too obscure or inane to put on what has become the country's $819 billion post-Christmas list.

Las Vegas is seeking $2 million for neon signs, according to a story in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, and Boynton Beach, Fla., is eyeing $4.5 million for an "eco park" that would feature butterfly gardens and gopher tortoises.

Shreveport, La., wants to put some police officers aboard eight new Harley-Davidsons and Chula Vista, Calif., would dearly like $500,000 for a dog park. That one at least meets the requirement of being "shovel-ready."

Politicians across the land, it seems, have been shovel-ready and waiting for years. The newspaper quoted the public works director of Lincoln, Neb., as saying, "Our approach has been to list everything, because we don't know what the final guidelines will be or what the final dollar amount will be." On Lincoln's list? A

$3 million environmentally friendly clubhouse for a municipal golf course.

Wisconsin, of course, is not immune to the lure of this edge-of-the-brink spending spree. Oak Creek would love to have $20 million for a city hall, a library and a concert hall; Grafton dearly believes it needs a $2.3 million bicycle bridge over Interstate 43; the mayor of Milwaukee dreams of a $100 million street car system.

Even before Congress passes the stimulus package, Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the state are wrestling to see who should have oversight of the federal largesse, and Gov. Doyle created an Office of Recovery and Reinvestment to shepherd the spending. The governor has even delayed his state budget message to get a better idea of what the state's take will be; estimates of Wisconsin's "share" have ranged from $2 billion to $3 billion to as high as $9 billion.

This froth at the trough is not just unseemly, it borders on lunacy.

While some of the infrastructure spending that would be funded by the stimulus package would boost jobs, the vast bulk of it would not. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., put it succinctly in a commentary earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal when he wrote: "Less than 10 percent of the (stimulus) bill could be considered true stimulus, if one assumes tax credits and infrastructure spending will jolt the economy. The other 90 percent of the bill represents one of the most egregious acts of generational theft in our nation's history, with taxpayer money going to special interest earmarks, an ill-conceived bailout to the states and permanent spending increases that expand government's reach in areas like health care and education."

What this stimulus package needs to make America work again is tax reforms to put money into the pockets of workers and businesses immediately - money that will flow back into the economy and recycle. It does not need a massive federal infrastructure spending spree on pork and projects of dubious value and little immediate impact on the economy. What this stimulus package needs is a cleanup of the mortgage mess and the toxic loans left behind that need to be dealt with in order to revive the housing industry. What it does not need is a dog park, a cop on a Harley in Shreveport or new neon to glitz up a blighted area of Las Vegas.

Congress needs to know this now. In their economic panic, they are mistaking the path to salvation with the highway to hell. They need to take the other fork, the porkless path they have not gone down in the past.