The Bushies spent 8 years dismantling this country. It was silly to think one influx of money could fix things. (And the Obamites have to take some of the blame for their projections, IMO.)

they been loading the gun (the big dawg, too) for 15 years...the bush/cheney thugs just took the opportunity to pull the trigger.

they hollowed out the whole goddam economy... and the Dims let 'em.

If you think Obama can fix that (with the Stepford economists complicit in the hollowin' out itself, no less) I got a room with a real live pony to rent you...

"White House economists have conceded that the stimulus bill should have been larger to accommodate the size of the hole in the economy." That accounts for Lawrence Summers saying "We think we pretty much got it right" two weeks ago.

Democracy has some flaws.

Mitigating and avoiding disaster is the least rewarding work politically, but the best way to govern.

Obama's mistakes were two:

1. Underestimating the size of the recession;
2. Putting a number of the estimated jobs that would be saved, related to mistake No. 1.

True, he has folks like Zandi now bailing him out, but that's after having to go defensive on this issue for a while.

I understand the American role of president as faithmonger-in-chief, but it can be overdone at times.

Bush fails to prevent 9/11, and gets rewarded with 90% approval and carte blanche to do whatever he wants for 8 years.

Obama successfully prevents the second Great Depression, and no one cares. Worse, the effort has to be "sold". Come on.

Steve Simtzis: Sad but true. We haven't learned yet how to counteract the enormous power of the right-wing noise machine. Obama himself may be too "cerebral" to realize that you've got to do more than give a good speech. We've really got to racket up our media game, particularly to those who aren't college educated policy wonk types. The Republicans may be terribly mendacious, but they are winning the propaganda war.

We've really got to racket up our media game, particularly to those who aren't college educated policy wonk types.

Blow brown people up abroad, and punish them at home. Done right, people will cheer, though they're living in a cardboard box under an overpass because of everything else you do.

Works a treat.

Worst case scenario: since there is really no jobs engine in our current finance-driven economy and since another stimulus will be DOA in Congress in an election year, job losses will cascade to a torrent in the next couple of years, leading to Obama's defeat in 2012 by a Palin-Beck campaign of rage. Then the lunatics will take over the asylum again and bankrupt the nation, but this time food and job riots will give them the excuse to impose the dictatorship they've always wanted. Think it can't happen? Just wait. We thought our government would never sanction torture, either.

Davis: Nice cynical riff, but more to the point we've got to learn how to better communicate with folks who are susceptible to the
Republicans' arguments. For example, if the majority of Americans don't understand counter-cyclical economic tactics then any efforts at stimulus will be politically dead.

It's not about copying the Republicans' God of Mars thuggishness -- it's about dealing with the all too real fact that Americans need a crash course in civic literacy.

Otherwise we're going to turn into the world's first post-industrial banana republic.

The R's and the D's treat everything like the NFC vs the AFC in the Superbowl: If you don't win, you lose.

If only they'd act like two guys in a hole: You take the shovel, and I'll grab the pick, and between the two of us, we just might get out of here.

Oh, wait; that's Socialism. . .

Landreui is voting YES !!!

For example, if the majority of Americans don't understand counter-cyclical economic tactics then any efforts at stimulus will be politically dead.

You got that right. My dad, who is an Ivy-League educated fiscal conservative who was smart enough to stop being a Republican in 2004 apparently doesn't understand it. In this case (for once) it's not that people are stupid, it's that counter-cyclical spending is somewhat counter-intuitive, because the right thing to do in similar circumstances at the personal and business level is the exact opposite. The right-wing noise machine is doing it's usual thing, but this is an area where we would need to be doing effective PR and education even if it didn't exist.

Obama's mistakes were two:

1. Underestimating the size of the recession;
2. Putting a number of the estimated jobs that would be saved, related to mistake No. 1.

I disagree. While that may be causing trouble now (in that it's harder to get credit for preventing disaster than for responding to one), I don't think it could have been passed without putting jobs in fairly concrete terms. In fact, I think they might have more effectively fought off some of the so-called "centrist" dilutions if they had responded by describing how many jobs they would be undermining (as Atrios did at the time.)

"In interviews, a broad range of economists said the White House and Congress were right to structure the package as a mix of tax cuts and spending, rather than just tax cuts as Republicans prefer or just spending as many Democrats do."

The tax cuts were a waste of money that could have been utilized for more job creation.

Tax cuts are failed Supply-Side, we are a demand economy.

$287 billion stimulus/3.5 million jobs =

$225,000 per job.

Eh.

Personally, I think some targeted industrial policy is good (in econ-speak, because there can be positive externalities which cannot be captured by private investors, so total investment will be below the social optimum). And I am in favor of increased social welfare spending. But trying to stave off every economic downturn strikes me as silly and pandering.

Davis: Nice cynical riff, but more to the point we've got to learn how to better communicate with folks who are susceptible...

How long did it take to get the atomic theory accepted among scientists? Or the germ theory of disease among doctors? Decades. They are professionals. You can barely get economists to agree on the basic idea behind counter-cyclical spending.

To get that idea widely disseminated among the voters, think in centuries.

Landreu is voting YES !!!

Wounder of wonders. It couldn't be that Reid's $100,000,000 pot sweetener to her might have made any difference, could it?

But on the whole, we're talking about a recovery package that saved us from a wholesale economic collapse

hold on there pokey, its way premature to be singing hallelujah we be saved, hallelujah we be saved. If the obama geniuses don't come up with something to create a lot of jobs pretty soon we'll be saying in late 2010 that all obama did with his anemic republican ass-licking stimulus in 2009 was delay the economic catastrophe.

If the obama geniuses don't come up with something to create a lot of jobs pretty soon that can get 60 Senate votes...

Fixed it for you.

Complete failure and utter disaster has a constituency, it's well organized and it votes.

"Conservative Republicans -- who've been wrong about every major economic challenge of the last generation -- who whine bitterly about the stimulus are, as is usually the case, misguided."

Misguided? MISGUIDED?!

Try greedy, craven and stupid and you're a bit closer.

"But trying to stave off every economic downturn strikes me as silly and pandering."

Yes, nice job conflating "every downturn" with the worst downturn since WWII. Context is everything, and you managed to somehow miss the most important part of this entire situation.

Also, people, let's not forget that things would be a hell of a lot different if there had been some rainy day money laying around to help with the stimulus. But no, Bush spent that money and then some on a war that we didn't need to fight. So, now Obama has to put it on the credit card, and take all of the shit that comes with that. So, doubly-good for the Republicans - everyone soon forgets that they spent us into a hole, and then they get to go on and on about how profligate Obama is as he tries to prevent massive deflation with the stimulus. If the electorate rewards the Republicans in 2010 or 2012 for this shit, then we get what we deserve.

"...because the right thing to do in similar circumstances at the personal and business level is the exact opposite." Redshift @ 1:35 PM.
Actually, no. The right thing to do is for consumers and businesses to set aside money for such circumstances.
Consumers may have a more difficult time doing that because of the stagnant wages for the past thirty years. It's very difficult to save when income barely meets outgo. While consumerism may account for the greater part of this economy, there is no need for so many stupid consumers; boats purchased for use three or four times a year, RVs, etc.
There is less excuse for businesses. Their major downfall, besides incompetence, has been the idea that return on investment has to always be above 10% PA. Fine for the occasional start-up perhaps, but ridiculous for older, established firms. Any net return that is more than 5% over the inflation rate should result in first, savings and second, reduction in price. This is AFTER sensible increases in employee's pay, of course. Apparently the idea that one's employees may also be the consumers of one's product has been lost.

Obviously, a bigger investment would have meant a bigger return. The $787 billion package would have been more ambitious

That's not obvious at all, since the Obama admin is dragging its damn feet and has only seen fit to spend 1/4 of the funds that *have* been appropriated.

A larger appropriation wouldn't be being spent any damn faster, and money into the econ *now* is what we need.

But of course that can't be blamed on the GOP, so you won't find it discussed on the WM homepage.

So are we now going Gault?