The NYT’s Gets the Stimulus Right, Finally.

They also ditch the Republican Talking Points. Finally the MSM does the hard work of looking at the facts. I am feeling a little positive now.

January 28, 2009

Economic Scene

A Stimulus With Merit, and Misses Too

By DAVID LEONHARDT

WASHINGTON

How much of a difference will the stimulus make?

Two weeks ago, a Congressional committee posted a table of numbers on its Web site that gave an early answer. The numbers came from the Congressional Budget Office and seemed to show that only 38 percent of the money in the bill would be spent by September 2010. That didn’t sound very stimulating, and the numbers soon caused a minor media sensation.

But anyone who looked closely would have seen something strange about the table. It suggested that the bill would cost only $355 billion in all, rather than its actual cost of about $800 billion.

Why? It turns out that the table was analyzing only certain parts of the bill, like new spending on highways, education and energy. It ignored the tax cuts, jobless benefits and Medicaid payments — the very money that will be spent the fastest.

On Monday evening, the Congressional Budget Office put out its analysis of the full bill, and it gave a very different picture. It estimated that about 64 percent of the money, or $526 billion, would be spent by next September.

That timetable may still be slower than ideal, and short of the 75 percent benchmark President Obama has promised, but it isn’t terrible. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars takes time. In fact, for all the criticism the stimulus package has been getting, it does pretty well by several important yardsticks.

First of all, the package really is stimulus. It will quickly give money to the people who have been hardest hit by the recession and who, not coincidentally, will be most likely to spend that money soon. The spending also has a chance to do some long-term good, by paying for the computerization of medical records, the weatherization of homes and other such investments.

By my count, the current package has just one major flaw. It could do a lot more to change how the government spends its money. It doesn’t have nearly the amount of the fresh, reformist thinking as Mr. Obama’s campaign speeches and proposals did. Instead, the bill is mostly a stew of spending on existing programs, whatever their warts may be.

David Leonhardt does a pretty good job of analyzing the situation (read the whole thing). I am heartened by his effort. There has been too much uninformed talk and misinformation about this Project for America and it is time for everyone to get serious.

It is also time for “The One” to forget his delusional ambition of getting Republican support to save the economy. In case he didn’t notice they are the ones, with support from some retarded Democrats and many Plutocrats, who put us in this situation. Why in “God’s” name would they want to get us out of this meltdown? Apparently it is working for them. TARP anyone?

Update: The House vote just made this very clear about the support Obama is going to get from the Republican Obstructionists for all of his pandering and concessions.