Everything you think you know about the stimulus is wrong...

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Azdak
Azdak Posts: 8,281 Member
edited December 2024 in Social Groups
OK I stole the title. I am still reading Michael Grunwald's book, "The New New Deal", a detailed accounting of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Even though I followed the passage of this bill in great detail, I am finding a lot of new information and excellent background on this significant piece of legislation.

For those who do not wish to read the whole thing, Ezra Klein interview the author and published excerpts in yesterday's Washington Post. I thought it provided a good overview of the book.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/09/everything-people-think-they-know-about-the-stimulus-is-wrong/

Given the financial crisis, the pressure to act quickly, some typical stumbling around by a new administration, and the beginning of the republican campaign of flat-out lying about everything Obama tried to do, it is not surprising that most people still do not completely understand what the bill was about. At this point, even Democrats are reluctant to mention it and the common media theme is that the ARRA "failed" because it did not bring everyone a pony.

A major criticism of the ARRA is that it was poorly focused, and that Obama allowed members of Congress to load up the bill with dozens of pet projects. Grunwald admits there is some truth to that, but it's not what most people think. I'll copy this one passage to illustrate the point and to give you an idea of the overall quality of the article:
EK: That gets to a conservative critique of the stimulus that I think is right: The Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress really did use the stimulus to invest in absolutely every program and priority that they could think of. In that way, part of it was a kind of Democratic wish list bill that came in under the guise and urgency of responding to the economic crisis.

GW: I think it was the purest distillation of what Obama meant by change we can believe in. If we’re going to spend $800 billion, let’s spend it on the things we promised we’d spent it on. Now, his agenda didn’t always line up with the liberal agenda, with education reform being the best example. But this was the Rahm line about never letting a crisis go to waste.

People really hadn’t paid that much attention to Obama’s policy agenda. They were interested in his race and Jeremiah Wright and his fight with Hillary, and to some degree, the agenda wasn’t that interesting — it wasn’t all that different from Hillary’s agenda. But it was this coherent agenda. Health care was too expensive, schools suck, we shouldn’t be boiling the planet, the tax code is screwing the middle class, our infrastructure is falling apart — Obama had made an economic case for all that. Health-care costs were destroying the economy, there were opportunities for millions of new jobs in green energy, unless we had an educated workforce we couldn’t compete in the 21st century economy, unless the middle class had money the economy wouldn’t work — and then, in the stimulus, he went ahead and did it. So I think it’s fair to complain he used the stimulus to keep all his campaign promises. But it’s a little unfair to be surprised about it.

I urge everyone to read the entire interview--heck the whole book as well (along with David Corn's "Game Change"). I don't expect it to change any anti-Obama minds, but it is instructive to revisit the early days of the administration and be reminded, not only of the seriousness of the financial crisis, but of the dedication of those who had the task of addressing it.

One of the most striking contrasts between the Obama administration and both the previous Bush presidency and the Romney campaigns is in the way they govern and their problem-solving processes. Read any of the books concerning the lead up to the Iraq war (Fiasco, Cobra II, State of Denial) and compare those to the ones written so far about Obama (The Promise, Game Change, The New New Deal, Bailout, and even Confidence Men). Instead of policies being driven almost solely by ideology and politics, you have a leader who has a firm grasp of the issues, is not afraid to surround himself with people smarter than him and who disagree vehemently with him at times, who encourages active debate, and who blends more idealistic goals with a more pragmatic, incremental approach.

Of course Obama has not always been right, has not always made the right decisions, is not shy about doing things for political effect, and has his own ego and blind spots. But IMO he does things mostly the right way and for the right reasons, and that's why I can live with the mistakes. As others have said, Romney sees becoming President as an end to itself, kind of like the last box on a rich guy's bucket list. Obama wants to be President in order to do what he thinks will make meaningful changes to improve the lives of all Americans.

I think a lot of Americans intuitively realize this and that's why, up to this point, a majority still seem to be willing to give Obama another chance, even though the economy is still struggling.
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