On reflection and in the light of the details of its financing beginning to emerge, Megan McArdle is upset that President Obama wasted all of our times on Thursday:
If the president were serious about providing stimulus, he would pay attention to the work of his old CEA chair, and pay for the jobs bill by decreasing the growth rate of something-or-other in the future by 0.2%. This is also what he would do if he were serious about getting any part of it through Congress. Instead he is apparently sending them a less-stimulative bill designed to be maximally embarrassing to the GOP–which by definition means minimally politically viable.
You can say that Obama has no choice, because the GOP is just so damn obstructive that they won’t pass anything anyway. As it happens, I disagree–I don’t think that he could have gotten the whole thing through, but the GOP would probably have given him a few pieces to avoid looking like total jerks, and while that might not have done too much for Obama’s re-election chances, it probably would have meant a lot to the schmoes trying to make their mortgage payments in a tough economy.
But say it’s true. If it is, I really wish that Obama hadn’t wasted my Thursday evening, and that of 31 million other Americans, listening to a jobs plan that was only designed to produce one job–a second term for Barack Obama. I mean, I don’t blame him, exactly. But I get a little pang when I realize that I could just as well have spent that time bleaching the grout in the master bath.
I think that this underscores my initial reaction: if you’re going to propose something that isn’t particularly efficient and, in particular, if you’re going to propose a plan that will be like a red cape before the eyes of the House Republican bull, wouldn’t it be not just more prudent but better politics to propose a plan that’s a lot bigger than the one that was proposed on Thursday?
I’m only surprised that anyone is surprised.
Drew, I’m not even surprised at that.