The economy works at least partly on people's confidence that it works. So far, the new federal administration has done no better in restoring this confidence than the last one. One hopes that it soon will.

Last Tuesday, the Senate approved the Democrats' and Team Obama's economic stimulus plan. And the new treasury secretary gave a talk on what he was doing to save struggling big banks. The result of both actions was that the stock market tanked again, dropping some 5 percent.

The market and everybody else may not be behaving rationally. Still, the reason for the failure to rally confidence is that whatever the government has done so far, it hasn't worked. Nobody knows whether the new package will work.

Maybe the reason is that measures that restored the American economy before have not been tried and, in the current climate in Washington and across the country, likely will not be.

When Reagan inherited the Carter economy - a combination of soaring inflation and double-digit unemployment - Washington lowered taxes to encourage savings and work, generally loosened restrictions on the economy, enforced budget cuts, and pursued a tight monetary policy to fight inflation.

Actions like these are not even being considered, even though the stimulus package includes modest tax cuts for working people.

Instead, we propose and place ever greater restrictions on industry and utilities in the interest of fighting climate change. We saddle the auto industry with tight new standards which may or may not be possible to meet. The government is poised to impose more regulations on everything on the theory that heedless deregulation caused Wall Street to go bananas in the last few years.

Oregon insists on a law raising the minimum wage even as the economy crumbles, and the state tries to prevent importation of liquid natural gas, which might hold down the price of energy. Is it any wonder that jobs are being lost all over the place and confidence is slow to come back?

The trouble with the big federal stimulus now is that the government is trying to do things that may or may not work, and ignoring the kinds of actions that definitely worked before.

President Obama pledged to run a government that does what works. It's a good principle. Would that he was able and willing to carry it out. (hh)