Guardian: Be happy, worried liberals. Obama's bill is a triumph

[BeyondGeography]

Michael Tomasky in Washington
Monday 9 February 2009

Well, it's already happened. Barely two weeks into the job and President Barack Obama has compromised fundamental principles, timorously caved in to Republicans and conservative Democrats in the Senate and lost control of his agenda.

Or ... wait. Maybe it's the case that, a mere two weeks into the job, President Obama has already changed the country's direction in remarkable ways. He's on the verge of a massive political victory when the Senate passes the stimulus package tomorrow, as expected, and the Republicans are apoplectic and divided and intellectually bankrupt. Which is it? Friends, I usher you on a tour of the liberal mind.

...For reasons tactical as well as substantive, liberals ought to declare victory and dance on the vast empty tundra that is the Republican present. Think back. Two months ago, people were talking nervously about a stimulus package worth about $400bn. Now? Assuming the Senate and House of Representatives more or less split the difference between their two versions of the bill - they will likely iron those out this week and vote on the final passage of the new product by the week's end - we're talking twice that, with at least $500bn in new spending (the rest is tax cuts). That is, by some distance, the largest public spending bill ever conceived in the US. Republicans are in disarray. First, this approach goes against everything they believe. Second, they are suddenly losing an argument that they thought they were winning.

...And yet, I hear a lot of liberal commentary about what a stinker the Senate package is. Well, as people should know, that's the Senate. That is how it's built, and that is how it works. In early 2001, George Bush proposed a $1.6 trillion tax cut. That April, the Senate cut $450bn out of it. Moderate liberal senators then put the brakes on legislation they saw as too conservative, just as moderate conservative senators last week did the same to legislation they thought too liberal. We can like it or not like it, but it's what the Senate was designed to do in the first place. Indeed, from a purely constitutional perspective, the Senate played its role here appropriately. This should not have surprised anyone.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/09/barack-obama-us-economy

[Bread and Circus]

1. K and R. I was just thinking along similar lines this am, eating my Cap'n Crunch...

Even though it "might not be enough" acc'd to some like Krugman, passing a $500 billion dollar aid package for families is actually quite amazing. Everyone's heaping on Obama these days and I think some of it is warranted (like making exceptions to his own appointment ethics rules (ie Daschle)), he's actually doing liberal things that Bill Clinton NEVER got done.

[yodermon]

2. I'm worried that the actual implementation of this plan will be hijacked & sabotaged

by the Grover Norquist-types that have burrowed into the government over the past 30 years. They've spent that amount of time convincing a large percentage of Americans that government spending is *eeeevvill* and thus must be shrunken down and drowned in the bathtub. They are *not* going to let passage of one spending bill undo a massive 30+ year mindfuck, at least not willingly. And with their corp-media allies, I guarantee that in 9 months we'll be hearing about how all this big bad government spending has predictably "failed" and Raygun was right after all, and blah blah blah.

[JayMusgrove]

3. Here's another good article from this guy's blog,,,

"Texas GOP Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison trotted this horse out in an op-ed yesterday in the Austin American-Statesman. Hutchison, and Shlaes and conservatives generally, are wrong."

"The distinguished economist James K. Galbraith rebuts Hutchison in a letter to the editor he wrote that the paper now has in its possession. Galbraith writes: "With respect to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Henry Morgenthau was not correct to write in 1939 that there was "as much unemployment as when we started" the New Deal. In 1933 the civilian unemployment rate was 25 percent. In 1939 it was less than half that, and had been below 10 percent before Roosevelt tried to balance the budget in 1937."

They both can't be right, and of course Galbraith is. Read this for an authoritative accounting. In sum, the unemployment rate was indeed about 25% in 1933, when FDR took office. The official numbers have unemployment sliding steadily down to just below 15% by 1937, then bumping back up during the 1938 recession to 19%, then sliding down again, finally getting into single digits during wartime"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

4. nice! thanks!