What I can't figure out is why these Democrats won't do anything. They seem willing to spend most of this 85 billion just to appease Republicans so they can say it was a bi-partisan effort. Can you imagine a Republican giving a damn about such a thing?

Baker's blog says CBO now states that their projection is that 62% will be spent through 2010. (thanks for the info teddy)

All the Republicans want to do is be obstructionists. The difficulty in playing this role is its hard to get elected with no POSITIVE track record of what they have done instead of a long list of what they have prevented others in doing.

So the bottom line rationale here is if Republicans do a bail out, it's OK. If Democrats want to do a bail out, it's not OK. That's called partisan BS.

What we need to solve the financial crisis is a retroactive 100% tax on the fortunes made during the Bush administration. There's too much wealth concentrated in too few hands and it's time to do confiscation. It would be worth it just to hear the pigs squeal.

As a result of the New Deal under FDR, it was 20 years before the GOP saw the inside of the White House. That's why they are so desparate to torpedo any economic stimulus.

The bottom line for them is power.

Though highways are an important part of the communications network; it would be better to use huge amounts of the highway money to buy "train" type of public transit from GM/Ford.

This money could be used to transition the USA to a more efficient public transit system and put GM/Ford to work building the new system.

SOS in Washington.

It's amazing the way tax cuts are figuring into the stimulus package- middle class tax cuts in the income range between $90 and $250 grand a year, a group I figure could be most aptly described as 'major campaign contributors'. I suppose this is expected to stimulate consumption, if not on major foreign vacations then on erotic messages, if not the most expensive entrees at the nearest upscale resturant then a modest one, if not a 'total home security sysyem' then at least a few more lights and alarms, if not a mercedes then one of those prestiguous hybrids. Add a few tax cuts, subsidies and protections for the major corporations together with additional declines in hourly wages, benefits and pensions and- BINGO!- the WHOLE PROBLEM of the recession from the standpoint of the people who REALLY COUNT is solved!

"The possibility that a young charismatic new president will push through an ambitious package that begins to set the economy right is truly terrifying to this crew."

The problem I'm having with this is that the Republican stimulas packages either did nothing or has dissappeared into a bottomless pit without helping the economy at all. I don't see anything in this plan that will do any better. $75 million for a school lunch program may be admirable if needed, but how does that stimulate the economy? I'd also count on a lot of this money ending up in contractors pockets at the state level.

The only thing that will stimulate our economy, provide ongoing economic stability is Jobs. My view is that we should be doing everrything in our power to return jobs to the US, creating new manufacturing jobs and trying to make sure that the money from these jobs is spent here and not sent out of the country.

In any case, emergency assistance for transit agencies -- which was eliminated from the House Transportation Committee's proposal -- would provide immediate stimulus, saving jobs and preventing fare hikes that would reduce workers' purchasing power. More on this at http://communitymediaworkshop.org/newstips/?p=406

I don't think the stimulus package will make it until the issue of rescinding tax cuts from those making 200k and above along with reigning in bailouts to Wall Street and war spending are taken into account. I think that this stimulus bill will undergo major revisions for the next few months as our new Congress and White House sit down and honestly deal with the economic crisis unlike the previous administration.

Terrance Mitchell
Redfield, South Dakota

Look at the good news: the Republicans still have nothing but short-term tactics, and they're the same ones they've been using for many years. They haven't changed even though they don't work all that well any more. Once upon a time the fake CBO number would have been a permanent part of the discussion, and Democrats would have to take that as their frame.

Two bad elections, and they haven't learned. We have to keep countering their spin and falsehoods, keep yelling at media and Democrats who fall for it, and watch for the Republicans to show they've learned new tactics, if not new strategies. For now, they will continue to spin half-truths that take greater effort to explain why they're misleading. Thank you Dean Baker for beating back this one.

Looking at this stimulas package further there seems to be a lot of pork in it. And I don't care who raised the pig, pork is pork. The very thing we were promised we would not have.

When it comes right down to it the Democrats and Republicans are the same: as in SAME MESSAGE, they just use different language. The influx of pork, some of which might not be bad, as long as it is for a worthy project and not just a giveaway to a wealthy donor, would have been in the bill even if Congress was filled with John-McCains, who said that he would always vote against bills that had pork in them. (Actually it was earmarks, but they're the same thing.) The Democrats will say they want a bill that helps out the majority of the people, but in the end, the benefits will go to the rich. They know this, and you'd think that most of America would have learned this by now. But November showed that we, as a group of people, have really short memories: in October Congress passed, over massive objections by the masses, the $850 Billion Splurge, I mean bailout, and most of them were still re-elected! They count on us having short memories and attention spans. Now back to American Idol...

Oooops.

The anti-stimulus crowd is getting desperate. After all, if the economy begins to turn around and has largely recovered in three or four years, the Republican leadership can look forward to spending most of their careers in the political wilderness.

The most famous words from the Vietnam War were, "We had to destroy this village in order to save it." This is now the Death Wish, the mantra, of the Republicans regarding this nation. If we cannot come back into power, we will destroy the nation and then go somewhere else and repeat the process. McCain got 46% of the vote in the recent election. The Death Wish party is not that far away from seizing us by the throat again.

Look, I am a Liberal, and certainly no Republican, but I do NOT support this so called stimulus plan. I am sick of self proclaimed liberal journalist labeling anyone against the stimulus as brain dead hunch backed neo-cons.

Our current crisis was caused because of to much cheap credit and aggressive monetary expansion. The cure is not more of the same. Where will these trillions in deficits come from? The cannot be borrowed. Foreigners cannot handle more than about 500 billion and even that is unlikely as they are starting to use their reserves for themselves. That means it will be printed. There is simply NO WAY this will do anything other than create high inflation and devaluation of the dollar.

The current plan seeks to cure an alcoholic by giving him more and stronger alcohol. Anyone but the most deluded can see this is not going to work. The alcoholic, the USA, needs to admit it has a problem, and then start a 12 step program for real change.

4 years from now, if the economy improves, it will be because the Republicans were responsible for the primary strategy, reigning in government spending, and negating a weak and ineffective president and Democratic Party..... or so they will claim. If the economy is still struggling, well.... the Democrats will certainly be entirely to blame. As Bob Herbert noted... who's going to listen to these guys? (except for writers on the Daily Show, or Colbert Report)

The Democrats 2012 Reelection Stimulus or Why We Need Medicare for All ...

The stimulus as currently drawn will NOT kick in until 2011 and 2012.

Not so fast Baker ... Reuters~

"WASHINGTON, Jan 26 (Reuters) - The Democratic stimulus package the U.S. Congress will weigh on Wednesday falls billions of dollars short of President Barack Obama's goal to pump most of the money into the economy quickly, a report released on Monday showed.

The $816 billion package will pour some $525.5 billion, or 64 percent, via spending and tax cuts into the ailing economy within 19 months, according to the report issued late on Monday by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

Last week, Obama's budget director, Peter Orszag, told lawmakers the administration's goal was to pump at least 75 percent of the money from the stimulus package into the economy by Sept. 30, 2010.

The report expands on another from the same office Republicans had touted last week as showing that less than 40 percent of the stimulus money would filter into the economy over the 19-month period. Democrats complained report was a partial review and CBO on Monday concurred."

Dear Mr. Baker, even if this report is preliminary the fact of the matter is that this stimulus will NOT work for at least 18 months! Being the skeptic that I am, this stimulus looks like it really starts kicking in just before the 2012 elections. What a coincidence!

This is exactly why we need Medicare for All. We could have the stimulus within a year ... everybody with health care coverage, businesses helped, the under and uninsured helped with state and local government coffers being filled once again. But NO, the Dems are playing politics with the lives of the American people to have a big spending spree for their reelections.

This Doesn't Pass the Smell Test Baker.

The peoples's deference to the elites on policy decisions such as whether to stimulate the economy is a crime. It turns the people into slaves of the elites. Do we need more roads? The people haven't a clue but they should. The fact is we don't need more roads. We don't have an ailing economy. We have an over-heated economy. We have too many roads already. But the elites push more roads on us, more economic overheating, to keep us addicted to over-production and over-consumption. We the people have a great opportunity today to put a real dent in the elites' gilded establishment by defying their cry for economic stimuli. This will further discredit the elites, toward the tipping point where they will lose their grip on power. The power will then disperse out across the country and settle into all of the local communities where it belongs. Get to work, people!

No more bipartisanship shit. The Republicans jammed it to us for a quarter-century- yes, even during Clinton the Triangulator. Even now, they are still at it, even in the face of their crushing defeat. Show them no quarter. They ruined the country and the world. They should just sit down and shut up, especially the known-alcoholic boozer Bohner. Who would take directions around the block from that guy? Or Rush Limbaugh, the hillbilly-heroin junkie.

As for deficit spending, the reason the Depression lasted longer than it should have was that there was NOT ENOUGH deficit government spending, due to the obstruction of coutry club Republicans like Mellon - sound familiar? That all changed with WW2. Government could then spend freely -how so, you may ask, if they could not before the war? And it was continued with LIBERAL spending afterwards - education, science, housing, et al- which created a modern social structure the envy of the world. But it took a world war for Republicans to loosen their deathgrip on money -that is, it took a mortal threat to them. Even so, Prescott 'granddaddy' Bush helped finance the Nazis with his bank, until it was closed as a treasonous organization. Hey, it was just business, just one fascist to another.

As we will be forced to clean up the Quadrillion-dollar-mess the Republicans and Capitalists made of themselves, the pigs, just forget about complaining about ANY amount of government spending for the good of the country, for the good of the people. And let's vote to STICK the Republican Party and the banksters and Wall Street with the bill for their blowout. After all, it was their party.

Desperate they should damn well be.

The Right have been humiliated beyond belief.

Think about it. All that cheating. All the dirty tricks, propaganda, hate radio, right-controlled media, Rovean politics, Swiftboating, smear machines, corrupt Justic Department prosecutions, gerrymandering, vote caging, vote suppression, voter intimidation, vote-flipping, and nastiness--AND THEY STILL COULDN'T WIN!

Since the Right in America are mostly aging white males with brittle egos, you can imagine the world of hurt the poor bastards find themselves in. I'm sure their recent setbacks have shortened their lives by many years.

A favorite apothegm of mine is that the worst thing that can happen to Republicans is to get into power. Of course, it would all be a lot funnier if people weren't getting killed.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news.

Wait.

No I don't.

http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2009/01/25/europe/OUKWD-UK-FINANCIAL-UN-DRUGS.php

Here's why there has been a mild bump up in the stock market.

The funny thing is, a gent named Mike Ruppert detailed all of this in his book 'Crossing the Rubicon', and also laid out how a 'controlled fast crash' would be initiated to manage the collapse of Western society based on the consumption of oil.

As we all know by now, the massive outsourcing of jobs worldwide mixed with criminally risky lending and investment decisions have left the ENTIRE world at risk of a collapse. Just look at Iceland, Greece and Latvia for examples of what will be coming for us all, very soon. Britain's central bank came within THREE HOURS of total collapse on Octeber 10 last year.

http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_G/threadview?m=tm&bn=7631&tid=947358&mid=947389&tof=21&frt=2

And don't expect any help from Asia. China is in the midst of it's own melt down. 1 million + are unemployed in China right now. And I am certain that number is MUCH higher than is being reported. The Chinese were making noises last fall they were going to dump the US dollar and pull their investments.

It doesn't matter how much fiat money you pump into the system. It's like a jug ith a broken out bottom. No matter how fast you pump water in, it all just falls to the ground.

The 'money' that Obama now, and Bush two months ago, want to use to 'stimulate' the economy JUST... DOES... NOT... EXIST! It's all 1s and 0s on a computer. You can create trillions at the touch of a key.

But without actual physical value, such money is WORTHLESS!

So the bankers (who despite their protests otherwise) turn to the one sourse they KNOW has value, that people will buy no matter how high the price.

Drug money. Laundered in plain sight, and reinvested in 'legit' activities.

Don't say that the government would put a stop to such pracices. They know all about it. Hell, they are often the ones controlling and transporting it. Just ask the CIA. And just for fun, look up the story of 'The Boys on the Tracks', and see how the trail of drug money led into the office of then Vice-President George H.W. Bush...

Walk in peace.

Remember that last "stimulus?" What happened to that one? Oh yeah, the head bankers pocketed the entire thing and then laid off a few thousand workers. You people are SUCKERS if you give the bankers even MORE tax money to blow on commodes and hoard.

Suckers! Chumps! Morons! That's what you are. Handing tax money on a silver platter to corrupt politicians and corporations that do not have your interests at heart. The "stimulus" is going to be a stimulus of plutocrat's bank accounts, it will NOT create jobs.

You're fighting the entirely wrong argument! You have a completely fallacious understanding of cause and effect. The stimulus will NOT create new jobs. It will destroy old jobs - inflation cripples household spending. Printing trillions causes inflation. Damn are you libs stupid - cursing the people warning you about a pickpocket!