Saturday, December 13, 2008

Stimulus: $1 trillion

The price tag of the Obama stimulus has now reached $1 trillion:
President-elect Barack Obama's economic team is considering an economic-stimulus program that will be far larger than the two-year, half-trillion-dollar plan under consideration two weeks ago, people familiar with the team's thinking tell The Wall Street Journal.
The president-elect is expected to be briefed on the broad parameters of the plan next week, with aides still hoping for Congress to pass a bill by the time Obama takes office Jan.20.
With the unemployment rate now expected to hit 9 percent without aggressive intervention, Obama aides and advisers have set $600 billion over two years as "a very low-end estimate," one person familiar with the matter said. The final number is expected to be significantly higher, possibly between $700 billion and $1 trillion over two years.
Michelle Malkin: "Give me your over/under that it’ll double by the time it gets to the Spreader of Wealth’s desk next month." And it won't work.

UPDATE: Pick a number! Any number!
Christina Romer, who will lead Mr. Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, is also surveying economists, trying to build political consensus around a larger number before it is presented to Congress in early January.
People familiar with the discussion say Lawrence Lindsey, President George W. Bush's first NEC director, has counseled $800 billion to $1 trillion in stimulus over two years. Harvard University economist Martin Feldstein, a Reagan White House economic adviser, has raised his initial, one-year, $300 billion figure to at least $400 billion.
That's got to be a cool job: Sitting around a table with a bunch of experts, offering multibillion-dollar estimates of how much taxpayer money to flush down the toilet in make-work schemes and welfare giveaways.

UPDATE II: "Remember when $1 trillion was a big number?"

2 comments:

  1. Got to love that fact that the GOP is full of Keynesian economists.

    It's not by accident that Bush gave us 8 years of peddle to the metal Keynesian stimulus on the order of $8 or 9 trillion.

    Now Wil. E. Coyote is off the over the edge of the cliff -- and the Keynesian are advising that everything will be OK as long as Wil. E. pushes harder on the accelerator.

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  2. Boy, the unions are licking their lips over 2.5 million workers to the rolls! Remember, no one works on a government job unless you are a union member. Just think of the new initiation fees ($150-250 each)and then the weekly dues! All that for TEMPORARY jobs! We know who's going to make out on these deals and it's not the workers!Ought to make watching the unemployment lists interesting! I bet the bookies will start running a weekly bet on the highS and lows!

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