Outstanding answer, CO.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
At what point is it Obama's fault?
- Thread starter Tsing Tao
- Start date
Outstanding answer, CO.
No one said $830 billion "didn't work". No one said $60 billion would get it "done".So, the 2009 stimulus bill that spent $830 billion didn't work, but a $60 billion stimulus two years later would have gotten the job done?
I not aware of anyone who thinks Obama could have won a bigger stimulus. But maybe he didn't try for a bigger stimulus. Should he have tried? He wasn't much of a Keynesian in the beginning.Sorry, what? You implied that the reason the original stimulus did not achieve the job figures that were promised (if we only passed the stimulus) was because Republican obstruction to that package caused the projections to be off base. No such obstructionism was done on that stimulus package at all. So I'm not sure what you're talking about. Either you're wrong, or you're referring to something I'm not aware of.
Obama’s Stimulus Plan: What Worked, What Didn’t
By Yuval Rosenberg
February 21, 2012
Cultural issues like whether religious institutions should have to offer their employees contraception may be making headlines now, but as election season wears on, the economy is bound to take center stage in the contest between President Barack Obama and the eventual Republican nominee. At the heart of that debate is a sharp disagreement over the effects of Obama’s stimulus plan, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
To set the record straight about it, author Michael Grabell, a reporter with ProPublica since 2008, visited projects in 15 states and pored over thousands of pages of government documents. His new book, Money Well Spent?: The Truth Behind the Trillion-Dollar Stimulus, the Biggest Economic Recovery Plan in History, looks at the stimulus overall as well as its effects on specific communities like Elkhart, Ind., the country’s mobile-home manufacturing capital; Aiken, S.C., site of the Savannah River nuclear site; and Fremont, Calif., home of solar panel startup Solyndra.
The Fiscal Times spoke with Grabell about the size of the stimulus, the politics behind it, and whether it was really money well spent. Here are excerpts:
The Fiscal Times (TFT): The stimulus is the biggest economic recovery plan ever, bigger even than Depression-era programs like the Works Progress Administration, you say. But you also describe the WPA as going from zero to 60 and the stimulus as going from 35 miles an hour to 50 miles an hour. What do you mean by that?
Michael Grabell (MG): In raw dollars, inflation adjusted, the stimulus comes out as the biggest – bigger than the moon race, the WPA, the Louisiana Purchase, the Manhattan Project. The point of the zero to 60 is that the annual budget in the 1930s was $3 billion. So when the WPA came in spending $11 billion in the dollars of the time, it was three times the annual budget. All of a sudden there’s this huge government ramp-up in spending. It’s obviously going to be a lot more noticeable than today, when we have a $3 trillion budget that includes Social Security and Medicare. This [stimulus] was only 25 percent or so of the annual budget; it was a lot more like going from 35 miles per hour to 50.
RELATED: The Drag from Premature Austerity
TFT: How do the people you talked to in your reporting see the stimulus?
MG: Politically you get this very polarized view: Republicans say it was a total flop and Democrats say it prevented a second Great Depression. A lot of Democrats say we should have just had more. When I talked to regular people who were out of work or hoping to find jobs, a lot of folks were disappointed, hoping that it [the stimulus] would be more noticeable and would bring more jobs into their communities. But I also spoke to people who benefitted. [They said] if it wasn’t for the stimulus, “I wouldn’t have had this extra unemployment benefit and would have been completely out of my house.”
TFT: President Obama’s liberal critics complain that he compromised too much, that Christina Romer, Obama’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, wanted a $1.2 trillion package, but it wasn’t advanced for political reasons. Your thoughts?
MG: In my discussions with Dr. Romer and others on the team, there was an economic model that was done on the $1.2 trillion economic stimulus, but it was not something she pushed very hard. [Economic adviser] Larry Summers and [incoming White House Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel [believed] that they would never get a trillion-dollar bill through Congress. There was a political caution and almost internal censorship to not look politically naïve. Dr. Romer told me she was the new kid in Washington. So when they got up to $800 billion she thought that was a pretty big coup because at the time they were talking about $600 billion. And when they went into this meeting on December 8, 2008, to really lay out the stimulus effects, they were taking about $700, $800, $900 billion. And no one really mentioned “the T word” at this meeting.
More >>
By Yuval Rosenberg
February 21, 2012
Cultural issues like whether religious institutions should have to offer their employees contraception may be making headlines now, but as election season wears on, the economy is bound to take center stage in the contest between President Barack Obama and the eventual Republican nominee. At the heart of that debate is a sharp disagreement over the effects of Obama’s stimulus plan, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
To set the record straight about it, author Michael Grabell, a reporter with ProPublica since 2008, visited projects in 15 states and pored over thousands of pages of government documents. His new book, Money Well Spent?: The Truth Behind the Trillion-Dollar Stimulus, the Biggest Economic Recovery Plan in History, looks at the stimulus overall as well as its effects on specific communities like Elkhart, Ind., the country’s mobile-home manufacturing capital; Aiken, S.C., site of the Savannah River nuclear site; and Fremont, Calif., home of solar panel startup Solyndra.
The Fiscal Times spoke with Grabell about the size of the stimulus, the politics behind it, and whether it was really money well spent. Here are excerpts:
The Fiscal Times (TFT): The stimulus is the biggest economic recovery plan ever, bigger even than Depression-era programs like the Works Progress Administration, you say. But you also describe the WPA as going from zero to 60 and the stimulus as going from 35 miles an hour to 50 miles an hour. What do you mean by that?
Michael Grabell (MG): In raw dollars, inflation adjusted, the stimulus comes out as the biggest – bigger than the moon race, the WPA, the Louisiana Purchase, the Manhattan Project. The point of the zero to 60 is that the annual budget in the 1930s was $3 billion. So when the WPA came in spending $11 billion in the dollars of the time, it was three times the annual budget. All of a sudden there’s this huge government ramp-up in spending. It’s obviously going to be a lot more noticeable than today, when we have a $3 trillion budget that includes Social Security and Medicare. This [stimulus] was only 25 percent or so of the annual budget; it was a lot more like going from 35 miles per hour to 50.
RELATED: The Drag from Premature Austerity
TFT: How do the people you talked to in your reporting see the stimulus?
MG: Politically you get this very polarized view: Republicans say it was a total flop and Democrats say it prevented a second Great Depression. A lot of Democrats say we should have just had more. When I talked to regular people who were out of work or hoping to find jobs, a lot of folks were disappointed, hoping that it [the stimulus] would be more noticeable and would bring more jobs into their communities. But I also spoke to people who benefitted. [They said] if it wasn’t for the stimulus, “I wouldn’t have had this extra unemployment benefit and would have been completely out of my house.”
TFT: President Obama’s liberal critics complain that he compromised too much, that Christina Romer, Obama’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, wanted a $1.2 trillion package, but it wasn’t advanced for political reasons. Your thoughts?
MG: In my discussions with Dr. Romer and others on the team, there was an economic model that was done on the $1.2 trillion economic stimulus, but it was not something she pushed very hard. [Economic adviser] Larry Summers and [incoming White House Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel [believed] that they would never get a trillion-dollar bill through Congress. There was a political caution and almost internal censorship to not look politically naïve. Dr. Romer told me she was the new kid in Washington. So when they got up to $800 billion she thought that was a pretty big coup because at the time they were talking about $600 billion. And when they went into this meeting on December 8, 2008, to really lay out the stimulus effects, they were taking about $700, $800, $900 billion. And no one really mentioned “the T word” at this meeting.
More >>
Dad: Come here, BSAM, I need to give you your allowance.
BSAM: Wow...Thanks, dad.
Dad: Spend your money wisely, son.
BSAM: But, there's this new toy and it costs a bit more than my allowance.
Can I go ahead and get it anyways?
Dad: No son, that would be irresponsible.
BSAM: Yeah, you're right, dad.
I will wait till I get some more allowance money.
Dad: Smart move, son.
You'll never run a deficit by acting responsible that way and Dad will never have to bail you out because of stupidity.
BSAM: Thanks, Dad.
(The government AND the people have forgotten who the "daddy" is.)
BSAM: Wow...Thanks, dad.
Dad: Spend your money wisely, son.
BSAM: But, there's this new toy and it costs a bit more than my allowance.
Can I go ahead and get it anyways?
Dad: No son, that would be irresponsible.
BSAM: Yeah, you're right, dad.
I will wait till I get some more allowance money.
Dad: Smart move, son.
You'll never run a deficit by acting responsible that way and Dad will never have to bail you out because of stupidity.
BSAM: Thanks, Dad.
(The government AND the people have forgotten who the "daddy" is.)
Government finance and personal finance are two different beasts. For example, no person has been perpetually in debt since 1835, since they're all dead. Yet the US government has been in debt since 1835, and it's still here.Dad: Come here, BSAM, I need to give you your allowance.
BSAM: Wow...Thanks, dad.
Dad: Spend your money wisely, son.
BSAM: But, there's this new toy and it costs a bit more than my allowance.
Can I go ahead and get it anyways?
Dad: No son, that would be irresponsible.
BSAM: Yeah, you're right, dad.
I will wait till I get some more allowance money.
Dad: Smart move, son.
You'll never run a deficit by acting responsible that way and Dad will never have to bail you out because of stupidity.
BSAM: Thanks, Dad.
(The government AND the people have forgotten who the "daddy" is.)
Easy to say, but prove it.^Fail^
Now, could an immortal person have carried debt since 1835, making payments on it, rolling it over, taking more on as her income rose over the decades. Yes, indeed that person could have.
Of course, a mortal person can do the same. I'd guess Trump has debt right now.
You are so out of your depth, lol.1 + 0 = 1
1 + 0 = 5
Which is a true statement?