Good News...850 Billion Or 1 Trillion Or Whatever It Costs Stimulus Plan Might Help The Country In Two Years Or So

Call it the Wimpy Plan...if you give me an unlimited amount of money today, I'll give you the benefit sometime after 2010.

t least one-quarter of House Democrats’ proposed $825 billion economic stimulus plan wouldn’t be spent until at least 2011, according to a report that suggests the package may take longer than expected to boost the economy.

A Congressional Budget Office analysis said most of the plan’s $355 billion in appropriations for programs such as highway construction wouldn’t be spent until after 2010. The government would spend about $26 billion of that money this year and $110 billion more next year, the report estimated. It projected the government would spend $103 billion in 2011, $53 billion in 2012 and $63 billion from 2013 to 2019.

The plan, crafted with President-elect Barack Obama’s economic team, is aimed at helping lift the economy out of recession through a combination of tax cuts for families and businesses and $550 billion in new federal spending on infrastructure projects, expanded jobless benefits, renewable energy initiatives and scores of other initiatives.

...It suggested that much of the stimulus may not come until after the economy has begun to recover. The Congressional Budget Office has said it expects a “slow” recovery to begin later this year and that the economy will expand by a “modest” 1.5 percent in 2010.

It's almost as if the real point is simply to increase government spending in order to reward Democratic constituencies or something.

Of course all of that assumes there's any benefit to the economy from running up huge deficits to begin with and if that's true, why hasn't the record spending and deficits we have already incurred brought us to the promised land already?

posted by DrewM. at 02:14 PM

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