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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (102489)	1/30/2009 7:59:35 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543106

Steve, there's a longish post on the "how to pay for it" theme but the short of it goes something like this. We have no serious idea how deep and wide the problem is but all evidence makes it look like the mother of all economic problems. To borrow a phrase. In that case, I would rather spend and borrow too much than too little. And I think the upside is that we'll have less debt from addressing it aggressively than from being parsimonious. Lots of detail to all that but that's my bottom line.

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (102489)	2/1/2009 11:02:50 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543106

If you assume a big government stimulus is needed, the problem with $800bil of infrastructure spending is that it would take years to spend (esp. if you mean $800bil additional spending, and are not counting current federal spending on infrastructure). You would probably still be spending when the recovery is well under way, perhaps helping to build a new bubble. If we are relatively unlucky, you could still be spending when the next down turn comes around after the recovery. $800bil additional infrastructure spending, isn't an emergency stimulus, its a long, or at least mid, term spending bill.