Help regarding stimulus package

[JackintheGreen]

Fellow DUers,

I almost (almost!) hate to ask this question, but forgive me for I have been out of the country and without reliable 'net access since October. I just returned the the States this week, but honestly I have been more focused on catching up with my wife than with catching up on the news. Now that we've caught up a bit, I am turning some attention to the news. So, what's the deal with the Obama stimulus package? Or rather, how is it manifestly different from last year's Bush stimulus?

OK, I know these are huge questions, and simplistic to boot, so please let me clarify. I have read the 14 page summary posted on DU from the Grist Mill here: http://www.pdfdownload.org/pdf2html/pdf2html.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fgristmill.grist.org%2Fimages%2Fuser%2F6337%2FObama_Biden_Stimulus_Package.pdf&images=yes

And I have reviewed, briefly, many of the posts from the past week as well as those from last year relating to the Bush plan, and I know that Boner-Bonehead-Boehner *loved* the Bush plan and equally loathes the Obama plan, but in their simplest contours they both speak to similar concerns.

Granted: the Bush plan was actually aimed at the lordling classes, though it claimed to give relief to the rest of us. It claimed to offer incentives to small business (and BIG business), immediate tax relief to the small fishes - in the shape of $X00.00 checks, aid to seniors (after the dems insisted), and if I recall correctly infrastructural investments.

Granted: whatever the chimp claimed could be summarily dismissed as a sop to the plebes to distract us while he sucked the dick of big business.

But: after reading the Obama-Biden plan, it seems to offer many of the same things: incentives to small business for new hires, immediate tax relief to the rest of us, zero capital gains under specific circumstances, infrastructural investment (in the shape of a WPA style works program to the tune of $25 billion), loans to big business (the auto industry especially), etc. etc., and yet Boner detests it, decries it at every opportunity, says now we can't do exactly what Bush did to save the economy.

Granted: that's just partisan posturing.

But the hell have I missed in my admittedly superficial glossing attempt to catch up?

I am not asking for a point-by-point, detailed explanation from any of you. Rather I hope somebody can point me towards a link online or a discussion on DU that I haven't yet found that sums things up nicely. I have a lot of policy to catch on, and it has become clear to me this morning that just catching up of the economic aspects could demolish what time I have.

Can anybody offer some good links?

Thanks!