President Obama and congressional leaders expressed confidence earlier today that the stimulus bill, now at $825 billion, is still on track for the February 16 deadline. Great, so our economy will begin healing in about a month? Time to go out and buy a couple of Hummers? Not necessarily. Republicans like House Minority Leader John Boehner are asking how spending “hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives,” among other programs, will “stimulate the economy” (contraceptives … stimulate … there must be a pun in there somewhere). They’re also pointing to a Congressional Budget Office report released a few days ago that found much of the government spending in the bill won’t have an impact on the economy until October 2010, even though we want it to work now. And David Brooks took to the op-ed pages today to lambaste the proposed plan, calling it “a muddled mixture of short-term stimulus haste and long-term spending commitments” and “an unholy marriage that manages to combine the worst of each approach.” And as we all know, if there’s one thing that can really get conservative opposition churning, it’s unholy marriages.
Washington Is Confident It Can Forge Recovery Plan [NYT]
The First Test [NYT]
