For some reason, we tend to turn to government to resolve all our problems.

So it is with our current economic downturn. Surely, we feel, the problem is not so much our inability to make more money, but rather government's inability to take our money and redirect it in productive ways.

That, at any rate, seemed to be the subtext in this week's congressional "hearings" sponsored in Honolulu by Hawai'i Sen. Daniel K. Inouye. Inouye is chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, and it was in that role that he held a get-together to discuss how Hawai'i is doing in its efforts to spend federal economic "stimulus dollars."

Pretty good, he was told. Gov. Linda Lingle, no political friend of Inouye's by any means, said her administration was pumping the money out for health, education, social service and transportation programs that benefit people across the state.

But how much of this is a shell game? After all, the programs cited by Inouye and Lingle are not new. Health care for the indigent, or Medicaid, physical improvements to our transportation infrastructure and food stamps are hardly new programs. And how much "stimulus" is created when federal dollars are swapped out for local education dollars cut at the Department of Education and the University of Hawai'i?

It surely might be possible to argue that all this amounts to little more than shifting chess pieces around a board already scribed and determined.

The only difference is that Uncle Sam can print money to plug into the holes in our economic safety net; the states cannot. But that simply remains an ability to respond to our problems, not by any means a cure.

In direct terms: If a state such as Hawai'i has to cut spending for education due to a lack of tax revenues, the temporary availability of federal dollars to fill in the gap is welcome but hardly is responsive to the underlying problem.

In short, the federal "stimulus" package is largely going to prop up programs already in place. Welcome, yes, but not much related to the economic dislocations that got us into this mess in the first place.

KENNEDY & INOUYE

The sad news yesterday that Sen. Edward Kennedy has died changes the political dynamic both for the U.S. Senate and for Hawai'i.

Inouye was already third in seniority in the Senate behind Kennedy and West Virginia's Robert Byrd, who himself is ailing. That makes the Hawai'i senator second in seniority in theory but first in practice in the tradition-bound U.S. Senate. That becomes a heavy weight.

Inouye has shied away from the national stage during most of his career, with a few exceptions. (He served on the Watergate investigative committee and was keynoter at the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, for instance). With Kennedy's passing, Inouye will be thrust even more forcefully into the national spotlight.

That means, inevitably, he will have less time to spend focused on Hawai'i's needs and more on those of the nation as a whole.