Is it possible that every part of President Obama’s economic recovery plan is flawed, but the whole might prove greater than the sum of the parts? The short answer is that no one knows. But we now know enough to make some reasonable guesses.
The stimulus package, signed by the President in Denver last Tuesday, is a flawed mixture of tax cuts, spending, pork and, the special funding for congressmen’s pet projects that Barack Obama had promised to consign to the dustbin of history. The spending-will-save-us Keynesians are over-joyed, and the spending-will-break-us monetarists and conservatives are disconsolate, but neither really knows what the effects of the package will be. We do know that those effects will be late in coming: it will take two months to review bids for repair work on bridges and roads — much longer for new infrastructure projects — and an additional four months to get the work started and the pay checks cut.
