Friday, January 30, 2009

The Point of the Stimulus   [Ramesh Ponnuru]

Ron Brownstein writes (I think it's a temporary link):

To call the economic legislation now moving through Congress a stimulus bill obscures its full implications. The measure represents the most ambitious effort in decades to swell public spending on domestic priorities such as education, infrastructure, and scientific research that many Democrats consider the foundation stones of sustained prosperity.

The Democratic plan . . . provides the biggest surge in long-term public investment since President Johnson's Great Society in the 1960s. . . .

[T]he bill also emphatically expands programs targeted more at the far term than the near term — from aid to schools in low-income areas ($13 billion) to expanded college loans ($16 billion) and scientific research ($10 billion). In normal times, Congress might never enlarge so many programs at once. But, as with Reagan's tax cut, the crisis-induced demand for action may suspend the normal laws of political gravity — and allow Democrats to redirect federal priorities as boldly as Reagan did. "This is a once-in-a-25-year opportunity to [implement] a lot of our agenda," a top House Democratic aide says.

No word on whether said aide then added: "And if it shortens the recession? Well, that would be nice too."

01/30 02:28 PMShare