In our stupid discourse, you can’t ask whether or not the stimulus worked because the Republicans say it didn’t, and that’s that. The “stimulus didn’t work” might as well have been established by the Council of Nicea. You can’t question it. In reality, there are two ways of posing the question. The first is straightforward. Did the stimulus do any good? Are we better off than we would have been without it? Should we reward politicians who voted for it?
The answer to all those questions is ‘yes.’
The second question is whether it ‘worked’ in the sense that it repaired the damage done to the economy by the collapse of the housing bubble and the financial sector. That’s a more subjective question. No bill could reverse the financial damage done to countless individuals or businesses that failed. But perhaps a bill could help bring the unemployment rate down to pre-crisis levels. The stimulus bill ‘worked’ in the sense that it created over 3 million jobs. It didn’t work in the sense that it didn’t create 7 million jobs.
The obvious conclusion is that the stimulus bill was a good bill that should have been bigger. Trying to get a Republican to understand that is like trying to teach calculus to a donkey.
To the extent their lizard brains can grasp anything, they know full well that a larger stimulus would have done more, which is why raised holy hell about it in the first place, and why they continue to oppose anything the President/Democrats propose.
Great post…except for the gratuitous insult of donkeys.
You may not be able to teach calculus to a donkey, but at least the donkey is being willfully stupid. The donkey just doesn’t know any better.
But Romney wanted a bigger, longer stimulus package. http://my.firedoglake.com/scarecrow/2011/06/28/mitt-romney-says-obama-needed-a-larger-longer-burning
-stimulus/
🙂
Boo,
I think that the Obama team screwed up the messaging post-stimulus (in fact, that has been one of their weakest points is to sell the programs they passed after the fact), however I think their seizure of the success of the auto-bailout is actually an even better topic of debate than the stimulus. It allows him to sidestep all of the bullshit surrounding the stimulus, and just talk about the risks he took when no one else would.
Also, what are your thoughts on the May fundraisingfigures, they actually have me scared since I had thought that Dems would at least out-raise the GOP in terms of regular campaign finance.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-romney-tops-obama-in-fundraising-with-768-million-in-may-
20120607,0,4412786.story
A large part of our public discourse is formulated as binary (worked/ didn’t work) – and that formulation from the outset precludes any genuine discussion and deep understanding. To me, very annoying is the metaphor “our political system is broken/ not broken. what does that mean? was it working when we got it new and we forgot to change the oil after 3,000 miles? (actually, I think that explains the filibuster situation veery well)
The stimulus was strangled in the crib.
That said, it helped the economy turn the corner.
If: USA = Political Institutions founded on White Privilege
And: Republican Party = Party of privileged Whites
Then: USA Media ( a subset of USA political institutions & privileged Whites) propagates Republican memes
Who’s surprised that “our” dishonest and fraudulent political discourse is crippled by a ‘thing liberals created to blame America/that no longer exists/and has no contemporary victims?’
Romney is now saying the President slowed the recovery just to pass the ACA. I guess it had nothing to do with those asshats Republicans in the Senate blocking everything.
What a tool.
What is really stupid is that economists are not being allowed to even talk about what is needed to repair our economy. The right-wingers and libertarians, such as those on CNBC, insist that the economy will improve when real estate starts to improve. Real estate markets can’t improve without people like construction trades working and making middle-class wages so that they can demand more new housing.
But the right-wing refuses to talk about or allow economists to talk about ways to get the construction trades back to work without housing. Infrastructure investment by government. Especially infrastructure investment right now with interest rates a low as they are.
As soon as Obama fails, then they’ll talk.