Legal Commentary

Purposefully Passing A Stimulus Plan That Will Fail

By Big Tent Democrat

Today President Obama said about the Senate stimulus plan that:

"We can't afford to make perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary. The scale and scope of this plan is right. And the time for action is now."

It is simply false, imo, that the "scale and scope of this plan is right." More . .

Paul Krugman and most serious economists disagree with the President as well. I believe the President must know this. The 11 dimension political chess defense of the President's acquiscence to this inadequate plan is that he will come back later for more. Given the urgency of the situation, even if true this is a poor defense. But I think it is not even true.

The reason why is President Obama has allowed this plan to be bloated with ineffective tax cuts. The AMT fix is NOT stimulus. It costs 70 billion dollars. There are hundreds of billions of dollars of other tax cuts which are also ineffective stimulus. This is not an 800 billion dollar stimulus package. At best, it is a 500 billion dollar package, when well over a trillion dollars of spending stimulus is needed to stave off a depression.

When President Obama comes back for more, he will be told that "spending" did not work and that he has had his chance at stimulus. I do not believe there will be second bite of the stimulus apple. This is why the 11 dimension political chess defense does not even make sense on its own terms.

President Obama has committed a grievous mistake imo. I do not think it can be corrected.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 07, 2009 (boomark / email).