Whether it will work is another question. There are plenty of experts who say it won't, and plenty who say it will.Posted on 02/01/2009 2:15:46 PM PST by SmithL
Washington - -- The Obama stimulus, as history will know it, is change you can believe in. That $900 billion and counting reflects the outcome of the November election and the ascendancy of at least eight years of pent up Democratic ideas. The stimulus aims not just to revive the economy, but to shift the role of government, from a vastly increased participation in education and health care to federal investments in science, technology, mass transit and alternative energy.
Whether it will work is another question. There are plenty of experts who say it won't, and plenty who say it will.
But amid all the uncertainty about its effectiveness, all the lobbying by advocacy groups and business, all the political posturing, all the Rush Limbaugh apoplexy, all the congressional pork, all the questions about its composition and timing, experts say to remember three basic things:
-- It has to be done. The U.S. economy is caught in a dangerous, synchronized global contraction that requires federal intervention to prevent the Great Recession from becoming the Great Depression II. About 90 percent of the world economy is in or near recession, eerily like the 1930s.
-- It will not by itself be enough. Vast new sums will also be needed to fix the banks and the housing market. If not, expect a replay of Japan's "lost decade," now going on two decades.
-- It needs an exit strategy. Like former President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, a headlong plunge into eye-popping levels of debt with no plan for how to pay it back could tee the country up for economic calamity.
Foreigners could suddenly dump U.S. debt and the dollar. Former Congressional Budget Office chief Robert Reischauer warned recently that the financial crisis is a "wake-up call"
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Visit: http://www.stimuluswatch.org
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By stating there are shortcomings to this bill, they will now claim their coverage is balanced.
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