Comments on: Stimulus Plan Could be Better

By: tim

tim — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 06:45:28 +0000

Yes. I agree. I rather fall on the cautious side. I wish to see more of a level headedness. What ever this government does now, it will effect all our lives for the next decade to come. It would be silly to play blame games, when many Americans are still losing their jobs. I am one of those, having been laid off. Yet I am in the belief that we should be careful to chop up any pork and feed us what we need.

By: Katie

Katie — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:58:16 +0000

There is more to infrastructure than just building roads and schools. Scientific research could help to improve the efficiency not only in the building of roads and schools, but also to other infrastructure including our water and public waste systems, our aging power grid, and our overall energy system. These things would reduce cost and waste long term. And considering we just shed half a million jobs in a week, are you really criticizing unemployment insurance? It sounds like one of the few thing in the bill that will be useful in the short-term.

By: Jim S

Jim S — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:17:50 +0000

mp is right. There are lots of projects that have been in the works and are in limbo awaiting funding. New infrastructure is not the same thing as infrastructure repair and the claims being put forth about how long all of the proposed infrastructure spending will take forever to affect the economy tries to pretend otherwise.

By: Justin Gardner

Justin Gardner — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:05:46 +0000

Infrastructure takes a long time when compared to tax cuts, which can be immediately injected into the economy via checks. I think that’s what Alan meant.

By: mp97303

mp97303 — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:17:59 +0000

“Regardless, infrastructure spending takes a long time to get going.”

Actually, many of the infrastructure projects are already in the pipeline. They were ready to go when funding disappeared last year. Once funds are available, the projects will be online quite quickly.

By: Snarkless J. Harden

Snarkless J. Harden — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:11:09 +0000

I will not vote for any Republican that votes for this “stimulus” plan. It is neither a stimulus, nor a plan, but a useless capital outlay for misguided liberal nostalgia. Any Republican that does vote for it will need their own stimulus plan to finance their next primary.

By: ExiledIndependent

ExiledIndependent — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:58:37 +0000

Regardless, infrastructure spending takes a long time to get going. Years. If the idea is to stimulate the economy quickly, infrastructure jobs aren’t the way to go. I think we’ve seen a precursor to this with the financial market bailout. Billions have been pumped in but hardly anything is reaching/impacting the average citizen.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:49:01 +0000

Yes, everyone knows Republicans always lie and Democrats are perfect angels. We have never seen irresponsible media coverage from anyone favoring the Democrats (ok, there’s that Dan Rather thing, and the New York Times on McCain’s alleged affair, and…)

I’m kidding of course. Yes, the Washington Post should be ashamed of this misreporting, but these attacks based only on party alone are tiresome.

By: Jim S

Jim S — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 05:26:12 +0000

Yep, the Republican claims about the CBO report is bogus as most of their claims turn out to be. Here is the MediaMatters article on it.

By: mp97303

mp97303 — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 03:33:47 +0000

Didn’t the CBO come out Friday and say that no such report exists. That the report everyone is referring to is one that only looked at a specific element of a previous stimulus plan.

“Reports of a recent study by the Congressional Budget Office, showing that the vast majority of the money in the stimulus package wonâ€™t be spent until after 2010, have Democrats on the defensive and the GOP calling for a pullback in wasteful spending.

Funny thing is, there is no such report.

â€œWe did not issue any report, any analysis or any study,â€ a CBO aide told the Huffington Post.

Rather, the nonpartisan CBO ran a small portion of an earlier version of the stimulus plan through a computer program that uses a standard formula to determine a scoreâ€”how quickly money will be spent. The score only dealt with the part of the stimulus headed for the Appropriations Committee and left out the parts bound for the Ways and Means or Energy and Commerce Committee.

Because it dealt with just a part of the stimulus, it estimated the spending rate for only about $300 billion of the $825 billion plan. Significant changes have been made to the part of the bill the CBO looked at.

The CBO numbers were given to a small number of congressional Democrats and Republicans, but were not posted online because theyâ€™re not an official CBO product. (Media outlets, while reporting widely about the â€œreport,â€ have declined to post it online. Hereâ€™s the whole thing.) Democratic aides say they are certain that the GOP leaked it to the Associated Press in order to undercut the spending portion of the stimulus.”