Time for a second stimulus?
Worse-than-expected unemployment has Washington talking about another package to give the economy a jolt.
The Route 101 paving project is the first of 10 early highway stimulus projects in New Hampshire.
(Ho/Reuters/Corbis)
The economic stimulus package hasn't had the time to kick in yet, said Christopher Beam in Slate, but already Washington is buzzing with talk of a second stimulus, as unemployment figures show the economy is losing more jobs then expected. The Obama administration is holding back, for now. "Politically speaking, though, it's hard to imagine the administration standing pat if jobs continue to hemorrhage."
"Democrats are all over the map on the stimulus and the possibility of a sequel," said Victoria McGrane in Politico, "and it’s not hard to see why: When it comes to a second stimulus, they may be damned if they do and damned if they don’t." There's growing talk that the first stimulus wasn't enough, but the public has little appetite for a second round.
Democrats insist that the problem is simply that George W. Bush left them a worse economy than they thought, said John Lott in Fox News. But "the alternative explanation should be obvious: The stimulus made things worse." It's nonsense to argue that the first stimulus was too small—the real problem was that "spending almost a $1 trillion on various stimulus projects means moving a lot of resources from where the private sector would have spent it, eliminating the jobs many people currently have."
Talk about nonsense, said Paul Krugman in The New York Times. Most of the stimulus money hasn't even been spent yet—it was never expected to do much this soon. "The problem, instead, is that the hole the stimulus needs to fill is much bigger than predicted. That—coupled with the fact that yes, stimulus takes time to work—is the reason for a second round, ASAP."
It would help if the cheerleaders for such a "huge fiscal expansion" let us know how much money we're talking about, said Joe Wiesenthal in The Business Insider. So, please, Mr. Krugman, tell the rest of us if "there's such a thing as a too-big stimulus. We don't hear anyone going around advocating, say, $5 trillion in new spending, even though technically speaking that would create a lot of demand and economic activity. So what is the cap, and how do we know?"
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3 Comments
Posted by Carly, Thursday, July 9, 2009, 8:50 pm I really hope that they don't pass another. The first one was worse enough, causing a projected deficit of about 1.5 trillion. I can't even believe that they are thinking about another one!!! We simply can't afford it as a country. The more and more we spend, the worse off we are going to be and the longer this economic situation will last.
Posted by Decca, Friday, July 10, 2009, 4:14 pm Worse than expected? That makes it sound like they expected something, did research of any kind, or had some idea what they were dealing with. It is crystal clear they had nothing of the sort. The stimulous money that is being spent now is being spent wastefully and fraudulently. The gov't needs to stay out of the economy, and quit robbing the taxpayers.
Posted by Gene Vetere, Saturday, July 11, 2009, 4:33 pm How about we just insist that every legislator I loosley use this term get a copy of the first stimulus bill and actually read it. Then they should also let the American public know know what they are voting on. Start from scratch and eliminate all the boondoggle, pork, earmarks and all the other B.S. that this includes! How dare they vote without knowing what they are voting on! What is happening to America and common sense?
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