Absolutely correct! So apt it needs to be reprinted everywhere. But it's not just the Republicans. According to TPM tonight, Harry Reid seems like he wants to cut Republican tax cuts to match, or at least offset, concessions that the Democrats make.

This compounds the problem. The Democrats shouldn't give in to the spending restraints in the first place. But, if they do, asking for tax cut concessions just takes even more money out of the stimulus.

The stimulus needs to be a combination of smart spending and smart tax breaks. But, beyond that, it has to be at least 5% of GDP to have any effect at all. Cutting from both the spending and tax cut sides does nothing but shrink the size of a bill that needs to be huge.

The one concession that the Senate GOP ought to wring out of the Dems is that all businesses and states that get stimulus money need to be required to use E-Verify to make certain that all of their workers are legally authorized to work here - that could save as many as 300,000 American/legal immigrant* jobs.

*Or other legal alien.

"There seems to be a real problem with how the folks in the Senate think about stimulus. "

Maybe they are fools and idiots. I consider myself foolish and idiosyncratic if reasonably intelligent, but I believe that if you set out to explain the "real problem" clearly in simple terms, at least one of us would walk away the wiser for it.

Job numbers are in free-fall. What else is there?

"To counteract this downturn, the federal government has to create demand by spending money, lots of it."

You want the government to borrow a trillion dollars (to use a round number), take that money/credit out of global circulation where it's maybe not working very hard, and dump it into a huge pile of "little" programs mostly at the State and Local levels? That will help drive up interest rates, keeping us away from the dreaded "liquidity trap" (which isn't what it seems to be as far as I can tell).

I'm a bit unclear on how and when it gets paid off, and how much bang for the buck each of these 400 or so billion dollar babies can be expected to provide. Or will the government simply have the Fed print up this trillion dollars right away, or in a few years?

Maybe if you could explain that to the Senate, and to me, you would get some more votes. After all, if parts of this bill are supposed to be a stimulus, shouldn't we know if the viagra is safe and effective before we take it?

It's probably very important that respected economists and others introduce an evaluation method for all of the parts of the bill. In addition, the economist have to be able to communicate their design and findings to the press and anyone else that can influence public opinion.

The recession will last long enough that if this bill helps, then we can continue to add to the parts that work. But, it's important to say before the various programs begin how we can measure its impact.

Bob Spencer

I only hope that the real clunker in the Senate Bill, i.e., the $15K tax credit for buying an (overpriced) house, gets tossed in conference. There are so many better ways to stimulate the economy than to prop up an asset class whose inflated values led to the crisis in the first place.

As per customary for longer than I care to consider the senate has sold us down the river for reasons of political expediency which entirely ignores what the nation wants and needs.

Instead of doing things that could have conceivably laid a foundation to resolve the things that are really of consequence, we have a piece of legislation that doesn't come near addressing core issues that would enhance our ability to compete in the global marketplace. I find it particularly shortsighted to have gutted the educational pieces of this package. Tax cuts don't come close to providing the economic benefits that a well educated and highly trained work force would yield. These are stupid people who have again created the framework for a stupid outcome. If they all died tomorrow we could just put them all in a mass grave with a marker that says: Here Lays Stupid. I have absolutely had it with these shitheads where everything they do is politically motivated and have zero to do with this country. Obama should just declare martial law and round them all up as traitors. Because thats what they are. Where every day they place the cost of anything and everything worthwhile out of the reach of the majority, they are harming this country. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

If we want to stretch the whole Obama = Lincoln metaphor further, then surely Harry Reid is George McClellan.

We busted our asses to get a near super majority of Dems in the Senate, and Reid just handed that power to 3 Republicans and 1 Copperhead in the form of Ben Nelson.

How long before Obama asks, "If Reid won't use his army then perhaps he could let me borrow it."

We Lost. There is no other way to look at it. We began this process with a larger majority and more political capital than any Administration could dream. Instead of promoting a bill that was almost exclusively built on stimulative spending (food stamps, infrastructure, aid to states etc.) we started with a bill built on bipartisanship and campaign promises and ended up with a bill that is nearly 48% tax cuts and excludes and reduces the most elemental part of a stimulus.

Many are blaming Reid - and he is to blame - but the real culprit is the Obama administration. They started off to conciliatory and allowed the bill to be hijacked by a group of hooverite Republicans/Democrats wed to concerns of spending reduction.

Obama should have been in control of this bill throughout - ensuring that every Democrat (Nelson included) was on the right page and that the pliable Republicans were given there marching orders.

Much like Cheney and Bush, you should have forced there hands and threatened dissenters electoral futures. They did not do this. Rather, they made to many early concessions that backfired and lost control of the congressional process.

In fact, Reid wanted to call a vote two days ago - believing he had the votes. Instead, Obama decided to simultaneously invite Snowe, Specter, Collins et al to the White House to cut the bill to an imaginary and arbitrary number.

And here is the kicker: This bill - in its current form - will not do nearly enough. Any sentient being knows that tax cuts return less than is spent. This is a loss and will do to little to reroute the economy. This is a problem. No more covering up. We lost.

I do wonder what world these people live in--is there some kind of parallel universe that is intersecting with ours in D.C. and New York where the economy can be saved by tweaking at the margins--but I'm not at all surprised by Obama. He makes great speeches, but his politics were always fundamentally Clintonite. He wasn't outmaneuvered, any more than Clinton was on welfare reform.

The Bush tax cuts didn't spur job growth, but new tax cuts will? I’m not a fan of either party, but the demand for further tax cuts is just the continuation of the Bush policy, which was a failure, since the results of that tax cut policy are what we are seeing now. Although temporary tax cuts can put a few extra dollars in the hands of those who have a paycheck, it does little for those who are unemployed. It’s not in the Republican mantra to lower the taxes of unemployment checks, since their focus is geared more for upper income tax cuts. The Democrats, for their part, wanted to fund everything under the sun no matter the immediate value to the economy and the unemployed. Tax cuts sound good, but are not the answer to steepening unemployment. If I receive a 10% income tax cut, I’ll be saving it and not spending it, and I have a feeling many others would do the same. The result of that tax cut would be greater savings, but little in job creation spending.

Job creation is what is needed and tax cuts won't lead to job creation, or the Bush years would have created more jobs than at any time in history. Take a look at http://layofflist.wordpress.com/ to see the daily carnage of job loss.

stimulus package that will produce 500,000 fewer jobs than the one passed by the House. Who knows, if the House had its way, the unemployment rate might never cr
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