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Monday, February 09, 2009

Two Cheers for the Stimulus

Michael Tomasky is talking sense over at Guardian UK:
Barely two weeks into the job and President Barack Obama has compromised fundamental principles, timorously caved in to Republicans and conservative Democrats in the Senate and lost control of his agenda. Or ... [A] mere two weeks into the job, President Obama has already changed the country's direction in remarkable ways. He's on the verge of a massive political victory when the Senate passes the stimulus package tomorrow, as expected, and the Republicans are apoplectic and divided and intellectually bankrupt. Which is it? …

[L]iberals are happy being unhappy. Or worrying. We're (I very much include myself) big worriers. With reason: history teaches that the tide of change doesn't always flow in our direction, especially in recent years. I know a lot of people who couldn't quite believe that America could elect a man like Barack Obama, and still didn't quite believe it after it happened….

Partisans of both sides focus on what has been lost in compromise, but there is a crucial difference in the quality of complaint. Conservatives tend to look upon compromise and shout: "Betrayal!" Liberals have more often tended to sigh: "Well, I figured as much." The blogosphere has given liberalism an often necessary jolt of the former disposition, but it's still the general reflex of the liberal mind (again, including my own) to assume the worst and nod knowingly as it inevitably happens….

Goodbye to all that. The stimulus bill, imperfect as it is, does indeed represent an enormous political victory for Obama. For reasons tactical as well as substantive, liberals ought to declare victory and dance on the vast empty tundra that is the Republican present….

Two months ago, people were talking nervously about a stimulus package worth about $400bn. Now…. we're talking twice that, with at least $500bn in new spending (the rest is tax cuts). That is, by some distance, the largest public spending bill ever conceived in the US.

Republicans are in disarray… they are suddenly losing an argument that they thought they were winning…

I hear a lot of liberal commentary about what a stinker the Senate package is. Well, as people should know, that's the Senate. That is how it's built, and that is how it works…. We can like it or not like it, but it's what the Senate was designed to do in the first place. Indeed, from a purely constitutional perspective, the Senate played its role here appropriately. This should not have surprised anyone….

[T]his bill is not the Obama administration's only chance to do something about the economy…. Soon, the administration will present a proper budget, in which it can signal priorities about things like transport and the greening of the economy, which are multi-year projects in the best of circumstances.

Liberals should press the administration for the most progressive outcome possible…. But at the same time, let's understand that they got about 80% of what they wanted here, and getting 80% of what you want is awfully rare….

I'm nervous, too, about whether the bill will work. But meanwhile, its impending passage sets the country on a dramatically different course to the one it's pursued over the last eight years (the last 30, really). To me, that's hardly a stinker. In fact, it smells rather nice. I love the smell of stimulus spending in the morning. It smells like ... victory.

Sounds about right to me.

5 comments:

barry gillis said...

Who knows when republicans realise they are falling, when their feet stop touching the ground or only when they hit the bottom of the cliff, its hilarious to see how US politics behave, its like a mix between reality tv and a soap opera.

Lets hope they dont behave like the proverbial lemmings and commit political mass suicide by trying to be more extreme than the others in their views( i know they dont do such a thing in real life, they are not stupid, the lemmings of course republicans seem to be well on their way)

One absolute dominant party would be a worse than two lame ones that keep each other in check, so i really hope the madness makes way for realisation how to change things for the better.

The stimulus package is only a small problem, who knows if it will work, since there is no way of telling how bad things could be in the future. Structual problems are so much bigger and need to be adressed to save your asses in the long run.

But you know with those crazy shows, there are all sorts of absurd plot twists, we better keep watching.

Anonymous said...

I do not understand why people are having problem realizing the urgency to get this bill approved. The number of unemployed people (11.6 million) and the unemployment rate (7.6 percent) rose in January. Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 4.1 million. The Department of Labor reported today that nonfarm payroll employment fell sharply in January (-598,000) and the unemployment rate rose from 7.2 to 7.6 percent. Payroll employment has declined by 3.6 million since the start of the recession in December 2007, .... most of this mess happening only in past three months! And some wonder Obama is pushing so hard for a stimulus package. Is the Herbert Hoover approach, do nothing, all we need, leading us to a twelve year depression ??

Dale Carrico said...

I daresay the disconnect you speak of can be partially explained by comparing the proportion of individuals in the top 5% income percentile in Congress and among the punditocracy as compared to the population at large.

meat olaf said...

Hi there Dale, former student of yours here. Just wondering, while we imbibe the sweet smell of victory -which unaccountably still strangely smells of napalm- what you think of the criticisms emanating from actual economists about the Senate's gutting of the stimulus package.

Krugman, in particular, just yesterday:

"...what's coming out of the current deliberations is really, really inadequate. I've gone through the CBO numbers a bit more carefully; they're projecting a $2.9 trillion shortfall over the next three years. There's just no way $780 billion, much of it used unproductively, will do the job."

Tomasky, however, can proclaim that though he's "nervous... about whether the bill will work", we should waste no time in commencing to crump on the corpses of smote Republicans. Now pardon me if I'm just being soft-headed, but would declaring a "political victory" be a "tactical" necessity as he ridiculously advocates if, despite their idiocy and mendacity, the Repugs really were that ineffectual?

Moreover, is cheering a political victory really in order when the Krug's projections show "the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years"? Or where an initial failure, or even more importantly, perceived failure of fiscal policy might have damning implications for the possibilities of progressive solutions in the (all-too-near) future?

If "the Senate played its role here appropriately", is the role that of Kamikaze pilot hellbent on achieving the most destructive outcome possible?

Dale Carrico said...

If "the Senate played its role here appropriately", is the role that of Kamikaze pilot hellbent on achieving the most destructive outcome possible?

Perspective, please.

Not helpful.

What did you expect?

What do you expect?

The Senate actually exists, it actually operates according to actual rules, the Republican opposition actually exists, the numbers really are what they are.

To declare defeat in the face of this unprecedented outcome is completely self-disempowering. And to what purpose?

We don't get to unilaterally implement the perfect plan by our lights, but to do what good can be done and set the stage for doing more.

I don't disagree with Krugman on the merits, and certainly I don't disagree with Krugman's making his case, but I disagree with anybody who wants to use Krugman or comparable reality-based economists to suggest that a result that is not yet enough is tantamount to nothing or bad.

This is going to be a long slog. Progressive people need to steel themselves for a long, difficult, struggle -- celebrate achievements, re-assess the terrain from there, and soldier on.

All this perfectionism is self-indulgent energy-wasting narcissism and amounts too easily to defeatism.