Greetings from Tampa! We’re having a chilly evening here — I’ve even broken out my sweater. (Sure beats Iowa.)

A few hours from now, Gov. Huckabee will be making an appearance in an airport hangar a few miles from the Starbucks where I’m passing the evening. If you’re wondering how he’s going to do in Florida’s primary tomorrow, I’ll summarize by saying that he was in Tennessee all day.

In the meantime, a reader sends in this query about the stimulus package:

Why has no one on The Corner or anywhere else that I have seen pressed the issue of how the Democrats will pass the “stimulus” and comply with their own PAYGO rules? …[H]olding the Dems to PAYGO makes the stimulus plan easier to swallow assuming they are not stupid enough to raise taxes by $150 bn as part of a $150 bn stimulus plan. And making them abandon PAYGO shows how meaningless it is as anything other than a mechanism to raise taxes.

What, you thought they might cut spending to make up for it? Yeah, whatever! In any case, it’s a good question. I’ll let Charlie Rangel answer it for you, from a quote he gave for this Jan. 15 story:

“Paygo is inconsistent with trying to resolve a recession,’’ Rangel said.

In other words, we see again that this rule was made to be broken. And that would be a good thing if we weren’t merely handing out money that we just took away, and then expecting it somehow to stimulate the economy. At least there are some provisions that will encourage business investment and hiring — those are the only stimulative elements of the package, though. And I’ll still enjoy spending my stimulus check at the Capitol Lounge.