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It's hard to believe that not a single Republican in the U.S House of Representatives voted for the President's proposed economic stimulus bill, which nevertheless passed without their cooperation. This, even after President Obama met with the Republican leadership, presented his stimulus package to them, and encouraged their input. Some of that input was taken into account in the final package; for example, some family planning assistance funds were deleted. But the Republicans preferred to have no real stimulus plan at all to having the thorough plan presented by the Obama Administration. Shame on them!
No, the Obama plan is not perfect, and one can argue over how many jobs will be created by some of its proposals. Speaking as an economist myself, the truth is that nobody knows how effective it will be. What we do know, though, is that the approach preferred by the Republicans, namely tax cuts and little else, will not produce much more stimulus of our lagging and flagging economy than was the case with last Spring's similar tax cuts, which mainly went to pay overdue bills and late mortgages. There will be precious little economic stimulus with a repeat of that experience. Even worse would be repeating the Bush Administration's TARP bailout of some gigantic financial firms which now refuse to disclose what they did with over $300 Billon of Federal money.
It remains to be seen what the Senate will produce in its version of the economic stimulus package, and then what the final outcome will be after the two different bills are reconciled and come to the President's desk. From what we have seen recently, though, precious little help will come from the Republicans. It is said that Nero fiddled while Rome burned; Nero would have made a good Republican.
