Minimum Winning Coalition
From one perspective, it’s unfortunate that the House leadership couldn’t persuade any members of the opposition to vote for the recovery package. From another perspective, this is as it should be. The country faces serious issues, and it would do enormous real harm to real people to further water down the bill in pursuit of excess votes.
Meanwhile, though the bill is disappointing in some respects it’s very good news. CAP’s Michael Ettlinger explains that with this bill passed we can now see light at the end of the tunnel of the economic crisis and Daniel J. Weiss and Alexandra Kougentakis take a look at the exciting clean energy provisions of the package. Next, we’re going to need to try to clean up the financial system and start thinking about how the regular budget process can plug some of the holes in the recovery package.
18 Responses to “Minimum Winning Coalition”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
February 13th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
with this bill passed we can now see light at the end of the tunnel of the economic crisis
Maybe so, but you know that the Republican rejoinder will be, “The economy would have been better anyway, and you wasted all this money! And now you want to raise taxes to pay off the big debt! Taxes are still evil!”
February 13th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
They could have bought Joe Cao’s vote with some levee spending. Or wetland restoration. Or anything related to Gulf Coast recovery, which somehow wasn’t a high enough priority, I guess.
February 13th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Do you really want to invoke Vietnam era metaphors here?
February 13th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
And don’t worry dbomp,
we already know the Dem retort:
“But it would have been soooo much worse
and look at all the jobs we saved!”
February 13th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
we can now see light at the end of the tunnel
I’m surprised that people still use this metaphor in a non-ironic way after it was abused to death by Vietnam war proponents. A sense of history is lacking…
Anyway, I’d rather hear about the prospects for the end of the economic crisis from someone who demonstrated a little bit of predictive ability by calling it, like Roubini. That CAP would cheerlead for the bill is a foregone conclusion.
February 13th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
“That CAP would cheerlead for the bill is a foregone conclusion.”
A pile of deficit spending and tax cuts that is now called “stimulus” was, not that long ago, called “supply side economics”. It’s all in the packaging. Now we have to figure out who is going to be more irritated by this observation – the “right” or the “left”. Takers?
February 13th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
i think perhaps a more accurate characterization is that we will now ameliorate the worst of the recession, and there will be further opportunities to ameliorate (and no, kafka, you’re wrong, in very fundamental ways, about this being “supply side economics” in sheep’s clothing).
the broader future of the economy, though, is much more ambiguous: the underlying cause of the financial crisis – excessive leverage – means that we ultimately, over a period of years, will be transitioning from a high-consumption, high-import, high-debt society (supported by all that leverage) to a high-savings, high-export, high-investment society (these are all relative terms, of course). that will not be an easy transition, and many business models will be found wanting for years to come.
which is why this stimulus can only be a downpayment: now we can take a deep breath and thing about opportunities for government investment that will help ease that transition….
February 13th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
at 50% + 31, matthew recommends not pursuing any further votes.
al compares this to not pursuing any further votes at 50% + 1, thereby continuing to demonstrate that he isn’t really serious about any of this….
February 13th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
“This is, of course, basically Karl Rove’s 50%+1 theory. You get the minimum votes you need for anything, because getting more votes costs you by watering down the bill.”
That wasn’t Rove’s theory. Rove’s theory was that even if a Republican President ends up creating deep divisions in the country, it’s okay electorally because the Republican side of the divide would be larger, and thus, they’d keep winning elections. It appears this wasn’t true, but more importantly, it said nothing of how to pass legislation, govern in general, or conduct yourself as a leader- just that if you DID create divisions, you could still win elections.
February 13th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Er, Kafka, the point of stimulus is to increase aggregate demand by increasing government consumption.
That would be “demand-side” economics. Supply-side economics says that we should decrease the supply of goods to avoid deflation–which is what’s happening with plant closings.
The tragedy of the stimulus is that it was COMPLETELY dominated by politics. The House Dems came up with a bill, then the Senate Dems made a bill that EVERYBODY agreed was worse, even though it cost MORE. The GOP, meanwhile, voted for the DeMint plan, which everybody agreed was insane.
So, there was a basic scientific consensus, and our government acted AGAINST that consensus. And it wasn’t just the GOP that did it.
February 13th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Public spending on infrastructure and technology was never included in the definition of “supply side economics,” kafka.
Do you know what the word “supply” in “supply side” is meant to refer to?
Hint: not bridges. Not rail corridor construction. Not military spending. Heck, it never ever referred to tax cuts targeted at low- and middle-income individuals (which would, in fact, be “demand side.”)
March 11th, 2009 at 5:52 am
Great site. Good info
March 13th, 2009 at 12:56 am
It is the coolest site,keep so!
March 22nd, 2009 at 6:47 am
tramadol
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
April 2nd, 2009 at 6:23 am
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
buy cheap viagra
April 9th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Great site, Good info viagra
April 14th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Thanks for the review!
viagra
April 16th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Greeting from Oklahoma, Texas! Nice site!.
I am from Tajikistan and too bad know English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: “Find cheap airline tickets, plane tickets, cruises, hotels and all information needed for your trip.”
Waiting for a reply
, Saxon.