I've just started reading an excellent book by Michael Grunwald The N ew New Deal which is all about Obama's stimulus-one of the misperceptions Grunwald says needs to be corrected is that Obama wasn't intimately involved in shaping the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
http://www.amazon.com/New-Deal-Hidden-Change-ebook/dp/B006JDFJO4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370612351&sr=1-1&keywords=the+new+new+deal+by+michael+grunwald
In fact, according to Grunwald, it was very much an Obama bill starting with the only new federal agency created by ARRA: ARPA-E, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. The idea that FDR was much stronger in pushing for stimulus is understandable.
As Grunwald notes on pgs. 9-10: "Nostalgic liberals complain that the Recovery Act pales in comparison to the New Deal. It didn't create giant armies of new governmental workers in alphabet agencies like the WPA, CCC, and the TVA; ARPA-E is its only new federal agency, with a staff smaller than a Major League Baseball roster. It didn't establish new entitlements like Social Security and deposit insurance, or new federal responsibilities like securities regulation and labor relations. It didn't set up workfare programs for the creative class like the Federal Theatre Project, the Federal Music Project, or Federal Art Project. (Obama aides grumble that it could have used a new Federal Writers Project to churn out better pro-stimulus propaganda). And it didn't raise taxes; it reduced taxes for the vast majority of American workers, although few of them noticed."
Incidentally, this passage is not available to be cut and pasted on the Internet so I had to write it out word for word-yes there was life before the Internet but it wasn't necessarily very good life.
Nostalgia is usually because we don't remember the past-rather we invent a new 'past' which never quite was. FDR was certainly not the Keynesiam believer in stimulus that he's remembered as among those who wonder why Obama was not like FDR:
"Obama and his aides thought a lot about the New Deal while assembling the Recovery Act, bit in some ways it's an apples-to-bicycle-comparison. While President Franklin D. Roosevelt forged the New Deal trough a barrage of sometimes contra dictionary initiatives enacted and adjusted over several years, the stimulus was a single piece of legislation cobbled together and squeezed through Congress before most of Obama's appointees were even nominated. The New Deal was a journey of an era, an aura. The Recovery Act was just a bill on Capitol Hill."
Yet, believe it or not, the ARRA was double the cumulative New Deal stimulus in constant dollars:
"But it was an astonishingly big bill. IN constant dollars it was more than 50 percent bigger than the entire New Deal, twice as big as the Louisiana Purchase and the Marshall Plan combined. As multibillion dollar line items were being erased an inserted with casual keystrokes, Obama aides who served under President Bill Clinton occasionally paused to recall their futile push for a mere $19 billion stimulus that had seemed impossibly huge in 1993, or their vicious internal battles over a few million bucks for beloved programs that suddenly seemed to trivial to discuss."
It is the largest stimulus bill passed in U.S. history by far. WWII wasn't exactly 'passed' as a stimulus bill. So when you here how Obama's is a failure unlike FDR in stimulating the economy this ought to be kept in mind.
Of course, lately what we keep hearing is from Sumner and friends how thanks to monetary offset, fiscal stimulus is incapable of actually stimulating the economy.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/krugman-takes-on-sumner-austerity-myth.html
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-crumbling-case-for-austerity-has.html
However, we have a mea culpa from the IMF and Democratic Senators are now emboldened to directly question the logic of austerity.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/should-i-call-this-blog-diary-of.html
Grunwald's book is a necessary corrective to all lies that have been told about the stimulus since 2009.
It's also important to remember that the ARRA wasn't just a stimulus-it was also about 'reinvestment' its total impact will be felt for decades in the future. This was the meaning of Rahm Emmanuel's comment that 'you should never let a good crisis go to waste.'
http://www.amazon.com/New-Deal-Hidden-Change-ebook/dp/B006JDFJO4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370612351&sr=1-1&keywords=the+new+new+deal+by+michael+grunwald
In fact, according to Grunwald, it was very much an Obama bill starting with the only new federal agency created by ARRA: ARPA-E, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. The idea that FDR was much stronger in pushing for stimulus is understandable.
As Grunwald notes on pgs. 9-10: "Nostalgic liberals complain that the Recovery Act pales in comparison to the New Deal. It didn't create giant armies of new governmental workers in alphabet agencies like the WPA, CCC, and the TVA; ARPA-E is its only new federal agency, with a staff smaller than a Major League Baseball roster. It didn't establish new entitlements like Social Security and deposit insurance, or new federal responsibilities like securities regulation and labor relations. It didn't set up workfare programs for the creative class like the Federal Theatre Project, the Federal Music Project, or Federal Art Project. (Obama aides grumble that it could have used a new Federal Writers Project to churn out better pro-stimulus propaganda). And it didn't raise taxes; it reduced taxes for the vast majority of American workers, although few of them noticed."
Incidentally, this passage is not available to be cut and pasted on the Internet so I had to write it out word for word-yes there was life before the Internet but it wasn't necessarily very good life.
Nostalgia is usually because we don't remember the past-rather we invent a new 'past' which never quite was. FDR was certainly not the Keynesiam believer in stimulus that he's remembered as among those who wonder why Obama was not like FDR:
"Obama and his aides thought a lot about the New Deal while assembling the Recovery Act, bit in some ways it's an apples-to-bicycle-comparison. While President Franklin D. Roosevelt forged the New Deal trough a barrage of sometimes contra dictionary initiatives enacted and adjusted over several years, the stimulus was a single piece of legislation cobbled together and squeezed through Congress before most of Obama's appointees were even nominated. The New Deal was a journey of an era, an aura. The Recovery Act was just a bill on Capitol Hill."
Yet, believe it or not, the ARRA was double the cumulative New Deal stimulus in constant dollars:
"But it was an astonishingly big bill. IN constant dollars it was more than 50 percent bigger than the entire New Deal, twice as big as the Louisiana Purchase and the Marshall Plan combined. As multibillion dollar line items were being erased an inserted with casual keystrokes, Obama aides who served under President Bill Clinton occasionally paused to recall their futile push for a mere $19 billion stimulus that had seemed impossibly huge in 1993, or their vicious internal battles over a few million bucks for beloved programs that suddenly seemed to trivial to discuss."
It is the largest stimulus bill passed in U.S. history by far. WWII wasn't exactly 'passed' as a stimulus bill. So when you here how Obama's is a failure unlike FDR in stimulating the economy this ought to be kept in mind.
Of course, lately what we keep hearing is from Sumner and friends how thanks to monetary offset, fiscal stimulus is incapable of actually stimulating the economy.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/krugman-takes-on-sumner-austerity-myth.html
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-crumbling-case-for-austerity-has.html
However, we have a mea culpa from the IMF and Democratic Senators are now emboldened to directly question the logic of austerity.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/should-i-call-this-blog-diary-of.html
Grunwald's book is a necessary corrective to all lies that have been told about the stimulus since 2009.
It's also important to remember that the ARRA wasn't just a stimulus-it was also about 'reinvestment' its total impact will be felt for decades in the future. This was the meaning of Rahm Emmanuel's comment that 'you should never let a good crisis go to waste.'
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