Most of what I've heard about it has been from the WSJ opinion page, which should be taken with a giant grain of salt as they're pretty strongly opposed to government action on the economy in almost every form.
But their analysis is that the bill is mostly:
* a little bit of infrastructure spending (10%?) * a lot of targeted "tax cuts" for the poor. I put "tax cuts" in quotes because they're tax credits, and many of the people who are eligible for them don't pay income taxes anyway. So it's really more like a weird kind of welfare. * lots of funding to expand government programs (state and federal) for health care and unemployment benefits. * lots of funding to the states to cover their budget shortfalls * some grants to various other government agencies to spend on hiring more people or distribute as grants (like money to the NEA).
The general tenor of it looks much more like "expand government services permanently" than "spend some money right now to get the economy moving".
Which is, you know, fine if you want more government services and don't mind seeing the deficit quadruple permanently and/or taxes increasing by 30% or so across the board to pay for the new services.
Though that cost assumes that none of those actions have a long-term effect on the economy, which is unkind of me when the whole point of the exercise is to have a long-term effect on the economy. If all the spending really does improve things dramatically then the long-term cost gets much lower.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-02-09 08:26 pm (UTC)But their analysis is that the bill is mostly:
* a little bit of infrastructure spending (10%?)
* a lot of targeted "tax cuts" for the poor. I put "tax cuts" in quotes because they're tax credits, and many of the people who are eligible for them don't pay income taxes anyway. So it's really more like a weird kind of welfare.
* lots of funding to expand government programs (state and federal) for health care and unemployment benefits.
* lots of funding to the states to cover their budget shortfalls
* some grants to various other government agencies to spend on hiring more people or distribute as grants (like money to the NEA).
The general tenor of it looks much more like "expand government services permanently" than "spend some money right now to get the economy moving".
Which is, you know, fine if you want more government services and don't mind seeing the deficit quadruple permanently and/or taxes increasing by 30% or so across the board to pay for the new services.
Though that cost assumes that none of those actions have a long-term effect on the economy, which is unkind of me when the whole point of the exercise is to have a long-term effect on the economy. If all the spending really does improve things dramatically then the long-term cost gets much lower.