In one of its trademark mushily oblivious editorials, the Washington Post today praises the “moderates” who worked out a Senate compromise stimulus bill. However, other people drew editorial scorn.
The effort wasn’t helped by those senators, including the leadership on both sides of the aisle, who wallowed in customary blame-gamesmanship. On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) accused the moderates of trying to hold the president hostage. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) derided the impending bill as an “aimless spending spree that masquerades as a stimulus.” Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) went theatrical. He held up a copy of an earlier version of the Senate stimulus plan to slam the process that led to its creation. She brandished her own copy to complain that Mr. Graham never resorted to such antics when they considered President Bush’s bailout bill for Wall Street. Friday House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) jumped in, deriding the quest for bipartisanship as a “process argument” and claiming that potential cuts in the Senate bill “will do violence to the future.”
What the mushheads at WaPo fail to understand is that Pelosi is right. Their ideas of “bipartisanship” call for process over substance, and the cuts in the Senate bill will prolong the misery of many Americans.
As Ian Welsh explains, the “moderates” have cut 1-1/4 million jobs from the stimulus bill (or just under a million, depending on what the actual cut turns out to be). To WaPo, 1-1/4 million jobs are not important. What’s important is that Senators speak politely and not rattle the teacups or slosh the cream.
Anyone up for storming the Bastille today?
Ian does the math. Paul Krugman also explains,
I’m still working on the numbers, but I’ve gotten a fair number of requests for comment on the Senate version of the stimulus.
The short answer: to appease the centrists, a plan that was already too small and too focused on ineffective tax cuts has been made significantly smaller, and even more focused on tax cuts.
According to the CBO’s estimates, we’re facing an output shortfall of almost 14% of GDP over the next two years, or around $2 trillion. Others, such as Goldman Sachs, are even more pessimistic. So the original $800 billion plan was too small, especially because a substantial share consisted of tax cuts that probably would have added little to demand. The plan should have been at least 50% larger.
Now the centrists have shaved off $86 billion in spending — much of it among the most effective and most needed parts of the plan. In particular, aid to state governments, which are in desperate straits, is both fast — because it prevents spending cuts rather than having to start up new projects — and effective, because it would in fact be spent; plus state and local governments are cutting back on essentials, so the social value of this spending would be high. But in the name of mighty centrism, $40 billion of that aid has been cut out.
As Matt Yglesias puts it, “the cart of bipartisanship is straightforwardly put ahead of the horse of policy merits.”
The stimulus package is too small–and it looks like almost all of the cuts are from reasonable uses of government funds that are substantially labor intensive and thus are the right kind of thing to be in the stimulus package.
Now, I tend to believe that process is important. But what the moderates are doing is ignorant. They aren’t looking objectively at the cost effectiveness of the various components of the package. They’re just cutting stuff out that it feels good to them to cut out. And yes, I think most Republicans want the thing to fail, and they’re ensuring that it does.
WaPo — deliberately undermining what the other party is trying to do is not “bipartisanship.
I understand President Obama will address the nation tomorrow. I hope he has the guts to explain to the American people that the compromised bill will be less effective than the one he wanted. I hope he doesn’t just praise the Senate for screwing up America’s future.