On Thu, 5 Feb 2009, SA wrote:
> I suspect this is much more about politics than policy. If the White
> House had been able to dictate a stimulus bill at will, the bill
> probably wouldn't have been a bad one. The problem started when it came
> time to get it passed in Congress. Obama really, really wants
> Republicans to support his policies.
Obama really wants voters who voter Republican to vote for him. I totally accept that's part of his plan. (Hence Rick Warren). But that's got no necessary connection with wanting Republican politicians to vote for him. In many ways, they are opposed strategies. Getting Republican voters to vote for him means getting them to vote Democratic.
As I've said before, the tax cuts in here were not put in for the Republicans. Obama has tried to sell them that way, but the only ones who have fallen for it are liberals and leftists (which is helpful to him). The Republicans hate them all and recognize exactly for what they are, namely Obama's campaign-promise tax plan, the dead opposite of theirs.
What bothered me here is mainly the size of the thing. It's mainly a $600B stimulus program and half of his $275B tax plan. It should be a $1.2T stimulus program not counting his tax plan. And of that $600B, less of it is green and less of it is infrastructure than could be.
And I wonder why that is. Neither of those mix choices have anything to do with luring Repugs. They wouldn't hate the more green/more infrastructure version any more or less than they hate this.
Maybe it's a scaling up problem -- that there was one $200B-$300B shovel ready, and beyond that point, if time is of the essence, you have to grab anything at hand, which dilutes the greenness/infrastructureness of it. And to do the green/more infrastructure one right, it would basically have to be an explicit 5 year plan rather than a right now one.
At any rate, I think it is many policy choices and policy beliefs that have driven this rather than politics. A belief that a trillion is a ceiling that can't be breached might be playing a role.
But arguing with you has helped clarify my thinking. Thanks. I guess the disappointingness of this is actually not that much of a mystery at all.
Michael