Ron Brownstein on Hardball recalls:
BROWNSTEIN: April 2001, George Bush comes in $1.6 trillion tax cut. The House passes it, exactly as written. Senate cuts it $450 billion. He gets half of it back in conference.
Yeah, weird how that worked since Bush had just lost the popular vote to Al Gore.
A couple of things here. First, tax cuts don't stimulate the economy nearly as well as straightforward government spending. That's a fact. Yet the final bill ended up being $400 billion larger than this current recovery bill.
Second, you probably noticed the utter lack of celebratory posts about the final recovery bill throughout the blogotubes. For my part, it's just not enough. It's not creative enough and the sheer enormity of Bush's tax cut underscores how the Democrats, including the president, wussed out on the price tag. So my prediction yesterday that this wouldn't be the only recovery bill we'd be discussing this year was less of a prediction and more wishful thinking. Next time, though, here's to hoping that the president will ignore the crazy Republicans entirely.