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dear jasjames,
the stimulus should have been "front-loaded" with its spending and not spread over years. it was a bad bill. the congress and the president gave the economy the "wrong medicine" and now want to borrow our way to prosperity with another stimulus. yes, any stimulus would have taken time to work and yes, americans have the attention span of a grasshopper but bottom line is the stimulus bill was a poor bill. i have yet to hear anyone in congress or the president admit that maybe a big part of the fault of the growing unemployment was a bad stimulus bill.

you can not borrow your way to prosperity. the stimulus is requiring record borrowing and crowding out other needs like health care. look at the long bonds and you can see the world is not going to keep letting us borrowing forever.

if congress and the president want another stimulus bill, i suggest cancelling all of the unspent old stimulus bill money (about 85% of it) and doing a timely, targeted and temporary stimulus bill with the same money. they do not need new money.

dear gaucho,
the stimulus bill was not "too little" becasue it was a spending bill not a stimulus bill. parts of the bill were stimulus but most of the bill was spending for non-stimulus things like transfer payments and creating a new government agency. even the stimulus part of the bill was wrong in that it was not "front loaded". the bill was wrong on all counts. it was like congress spent money on everything that it had been denied during the bush years and somehow did not manage to stuff into nancy pelosi's spending bill. it was rushed through congress before anyone could read the entire thing; it was like the country would collapse if it was not passed within hours of coming out; there was no time for deliberation or public debate. NOW, people are questioning the wisdom of the thing.

i have been preaching against the growing debt as it is a drag on the economy and recovery. during the bush years, the growth in the debt was terrible beyond belief and that will be part of his legacy. now obama's legacy will be to make bush look like a tightwad with the out of control spending. now we are told another stimulus may be needed. more borrowing, more debt.

this year the interest on the debt will be over $450 billion; as the debt grows (and more likely with a higher interest rate required to sell the bonds), this figure will grow as well. payments on the interest will crowd out other needs like healthcare and education. for our future, look at california and the budget cuts being required; now while the federal government can print money and california can not (the IOU's it is sending out is a form of printing money), there are consequences to printing money to cover deficits and they are not pleasant.

bottom line, the stimulus bill was a terrible bill. another stimulus bill will most likely be just as bad.

dear jasjames,
the one thing that congress does well is to get themselves re-elected. they are always thinking about the next election. much of the commentary i have read about the additional stimulus bill is that 2010 is an election year and the one thing incumbents fear is a bad economy and high unemployment (it's the economy stupid). if by the fall it looks like things are still in the tank and unemployment is still high and maybe still growing, watch for congress to spend like there is no tomorrow.

congress persons and the administration have noticed obama's "favorable" poll numbers have droped in ohio where unemployment is among the highest in the nation. this has reinforced everyones belief in "its the economy stupid" as the first rule of politics.