Will the Economic Stimulus Be Too Compromised to Work?

This week, House Democrats unveiled their vision for an economic recovery package of massive heft -- a bill totaling more than four times the cash spent during FDR's New Deal.

According to the Washington Post, the recovery package, totaling around $825 billion, contains $550 billion in domestic spending -- infrastructure investments, help for those getting pummeled in the downturn and aid to cash-strapped state and local governments -- and about $275 billion in tax cuts for businesses and individuals. The proposal circulating on the Hill calls for:

• A $500 payroll tax credit for workers making below $75,000. Couples making below $150,000 would receive a $1,000 credit.
• About $85 billion worth of infrastructure spending, most for highway and bridge construction.
• A variety of tax incentives to promote development of renewable energy sources. Expanded assistance to workers who are laid off because their jobs are shifted overseas as the result of trade agreements.
• Unemployment benefits increased by $25 per week, and federal welfare funding for the poor also temporarily increased.
• Low-income elderly and disabled Social Security recipients would receive a one-time additional monthly payment.
• $80 billion in funding to states for education programs and about $90 billion for Medicaid assistance.
• The package also contains "temporary subsidies to workers who have lost their jobs, and would extend the availability of COBRA [health] coverage through former employers, beyond the current 18-month period. Addressing another Obama campaign priority, the bill would launch a new health information technology initiative aimed at establishing nationwide standards, payments incentives and privacy protections for medical records."

Congressional Democrats are also considering including a middle-class tax measure that might add $75 billion to the total value of the bill.

Now the legislative wrangling begins, and Obama's transition team is reportedly hoping to pass the final product with at least 70 votes in the Senate. That means it's going to be the first test of the sunny "post-partisanship" Obama promised Americans on the campaign trail. The $64 question -- or maybe the $825 billion question -- is whether Obama will compromise with Republicans and conservative Democrats to an extent that makes the enormous economic investment fall flat; whether in the name of bringing civility (a mythical civility that never existed) to Washington, hundreds of billions of our tax dollars are dedicated to measures that line the pockets of various constituencies, but ultimately provide little bang for the buck in terms of kick-starting the economy.

Also to be determined on The Hill in the coming weeks is whether, and to what degree, the final stimulus package will represent a real break from Washington's often shortsighted status quo -- with longer-term projects designed to wean America off its 1950s-era, fossil-fuel-driven commuter lifestyle. In the short-term, infrastructure projects may be the way to create new jobs, but simply rebuilding the highways and bridges that enable us to maintain an ultimately unsustainable lifestyle isn't going to bring the United States into the 21st century.

Compromise or Bang for the Buck?

The budgetary debates in Washington have become dully formulaic. The Republicans -- joined by pro-business "Blue Dog" Dems -- want to cut taxes, and although they cage it in rhetoric touting the wonders of entrepreneurial endeavor, the bottom line, as always, is that they want to skew those cuts toward the wealthy.

Both the right-wing Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth, a corporatist political action committee, have their own proposals for a recovery package. Both have the same prescriptions -- and embody the same ideological assumptions -- as conservative lawmakers in Congress: extend Bush's "temporary" tax cuts into forever, and then cut taxes on corporations and wealthy investors, yet again.