Let’s face it, for most conservative Republicans, a stimulus package is a couple of Viagra washed down with a double malt scotch.

Even now, there are those complaining that instead of a temporary injection of tax cuts or spending to jump start our moribund economy, the best move is to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, an idea that fails stimulus 101 on each of the three t’s: timely, temporary, and targeted.

What’s fascinating is that no less an advocate of the Bush tax cuts than Bush himself appears to have eschewed this thinking. The stimulus plan coming out of the White House actually has some positive attributes.

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(This post was written jointly with Larry Mishel, president of EPI)

Allow us to quickly offer one more wrinkle—a really important one—to the ongoing debate about economic stimulus: we all want a quick, timely package to offset what, with each new data release, looks like a recession. But even if the process takes awhile, a stimulus package will still be very much worth pursuing.

There have been many statements in the press contradicting this point, i.e., asserting that unless we can get a stimulus package into the economy quickly, there’s little point in pursuing it. One economist told Bloomberg News, “Timing is extremely important…[r]ecessions typically last less than a year, so unless you can be pretty quick, it's not worth doing.”

The reason this statement is wrong is because it is based exclusively on gross domestic product, as if mitigating the fall in overall growth is the sole focus of an anti-recession package. In fact, our efforts should also target insufficient job growth, rising unemployment, and the resulting wage and income losses for many families, including those who don’t lose their jobs.

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