Stimulus - Response - Stimulus - Response

The flip side of Austerity.  Stimulus = injecting $$ into the economy, to get money flowing again, so people can buy, businesses can expand and hire.  Stimulus is about spending and creating jobs. 

GOP/CONSERVATIVE HYPOCRISY/DOUBLESPEAK ON STIMULUS (they know it works, but campaign against it!)

• Wonkbog: The Romney campaign says stimulus doesn’t work. Here are the studies they left out. (8/8/2012) http://wapo.st/O5YqWZ
• National Memo » LOL Of The Week: Romney Accidentally Speaks The Truth (5/28/2012) http://goo.gl/8CdHY
• In a single sentence, Mitt admitted that everything the GOP has been saying about the economy since 2009 is a lie. Asked why he wouldn’t cut spending immediately, the presumptive nominee said: “Well, because if you take a trillion dollars, for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5%.”
• Chamber Of Commerce Government Spending, Pro-GOP | ThinkProgress (2/2012) 
• the Chamber has a selective memory. It was a leading proponent of Obama’s 2009 stimulus legislation promising that the tax cuts and even many of law’s spending provisions would “provide stimulus and get Americans back to work.” Allen has called the law a “jobless stimulus.” 
• Though the measure passed almost entirely along party lines, the Chamber spent millions in 2010 to defeat the Democrats who backed the bill — and some of that money may have come from foreign businesses. The $789 billion law has been the largest increase in spending in the Obama presidency.
• Romney Bashes Stimulus, Then Fundraises In Home Of Stimulus Recipient | ThinkProgress (May 2012) http://goo.gl/qv4Jy
• Darrell Issa: "I called for these policies (SHH) but everyone knows they don't work" /economists' view, 2/2011
• Allen West: praises work funded by stimulus (tho he is against it) 2/8/2011
• Republicans call for DEFUNDING half-finished projects that they called for (2/8/2011, ThinkProgress)

from Nov. 2011/Robert Reich: "Super Committee is Super Trouble" -- an explanation stimulus

IT'S ABOUT THE SPENDING: WHY WE NEED STIMULUS DURING RECESSIONS

• Jared Bernstein: Obama Jobs Speech Preliminary: Understanding How Stimulus Works (9/6/11) http://goo.gl/gO6ZB
• Pierre Bastien, Cartoon: Economic stimulus - (accessed 6/2012) http://goo.gl/afYEm
• The question then is not whether stimulus works (it does), and not whether stimulus pays for itself (it might, but who cares). The question is whether we should be spending money now to help the economy. Stimulating the economy has to be priority #1.
• Robert Reich (Why The Economy Can't Get Out of First Gear) (6/12/2012) http://goo.gl/8MJvL 
• American consumers, whose spending is 70 percent of economic activity, don’t have the dough to buy enough to boost the economy – and they can no longer borrow like they could before the crash of 2008. // The earnings of the great American middle class fueled the great American expansion for three decades after World War II. Their relative lack of earnings in more recent years set us up for the great American bust. //  The American economy is still struggling because the vast American middle class can’t spend more to get it out of first gear. What to do? There’s no simple answer in the short term except to hope we stay in first gear and don’t slide backwards. Over the longer term the answer is to make sure the middle class gets far more of the gains from economic growth. How? We might learn something from history. (read the whole post for the answers!)
• Krugman, Reagan Was a Keynesian (6/14/2012) http://nyti.ms/KfGKKn: He was the Original Big Spender.
• Congressional Budget Office defends stimulus,Washington Post (6/7/2012) http://goo.gl/3dy8o

DID OBAMA'S STIMULUS WORK? (YES, BUT IT WASN'T ENOUGH)

• See the chart above.
• Political Animal - Romney: U.S. economy ‘getting better’ under Obama (1/23/2012) --good read, short
• Political Animal - ‘What works?’ Steve Benen (9/2/2011) - http://goo.gl/7UGOL
• Put away the spin, the polls, the talking points, and the ideological axes to grind, and we’re left with a pretty simple truth: things were getting worse, then the stimulus started, then they got better. This isn’t even controversial; it’s as plain as day.
• Under the Republican worldview, the results in Bernstein’s charts should be impossible. 'Democrats spent a lot of money, imposed their preferred regulations, prevented public-sector layoffs at the state and local level, and added a lot of money to the federal budget deficit.' And yet, almost immediately, the economy grew and the job market got significantly better. Some conservatives might look at this and say, “Well, yeah, but it didn’t last and now we’re slipping backwards.” That’s true, but it only reinforces the  argument — the stimulus made things better, but as funding faded, so too did the economy. Common sense, again, should tell us do more of what worked, and in this case, fairly aggressive public investments expanded the economy and created jobs. Ergo, if we now want to expand the economy and create jobs, we know what to do because we already know what works.
• The Impact of the Recovery Act, In a Few Easy Charts | Jared Bernstein | On the Economy (8/31/2011) http://goo.gl/vJez2
• David Leonhardt, Economic Scene - Success of Stimulus Bill Is Noteworthy as Another Is Weighed - NYTimes.com - (2/16/2010) http://goo.gl/wW4a
• Economic Policy Inst.: "An investment that worked: The Recovery Act Two Years Later" 2/16/2011
• 2012: Jobs Report Encouraging, More Stimulus Needed: Economists | Common Dreams (2/3/2012) 
• 2011: Shameless: Republicans scramble to take credit for economic uptick (1/28/2011) Alternet
• The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus, turns 3 this week. Did it work? Michael Linden, Director of Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress, answers that question in a new video by looking at three broad but important indicators for the American economy. All three were in bad shape before the stimulus began, and all three turned around at almost exactly the moment the stimulus started. Coincidence? Video: Did the Stimulus Work?

STIMULUS WORKED BUT IT WAS NOT ENOUGH:

• Everything You Need to Know About Fixing Deficits and Jobs (Aug 2011), Dave Johnson - http://goo.gl/Ovzkk
• Harsh words for the Obama administration--from pro-stimulus guy (ie, where Obama is going wrong, trying to appease Republicans, playing into their economic frames)

TAX CUTS AS STIMULUS? (SEE ALSO: PAY YOUR TAXES)

• Krugman: More Laffering - NYTimes.com (5/2012) http://goo.gl/cwGpE
• Art Laffer’s claim that low state tax rates are the key to economic growth. What should you think about that claim? That’s easy: it’s junk economics (pdf). See the data in the linked piece.
• Infrastructure Spending Is More Stimulative Than Tax Cuts: CBO: Spending On Infrastructure Is More Stimulative Than Tax Cuts For Wealthy. CBO report on the estimated impact of the stimulus on the economy found that transferring money to state and local governments for infrastructure spending had a multiplier effect as high as 2.2, while a one-year tax cut for wealthy Americans had a much lower multiplier effect (chart at link: U.S. Could Use More Infrastructure Spending, Not Less | Media Matters for America (6/14/2012) http://goo.gl/DtahD )
• REAGAN GUY: Bruce Bartlett: The Fiscal Legacy of George W. Bush, NYTimes.com (6/13/2012) http://goo.gl/hAidr
• The 2001 tax cut did nothing to stimulate the economy, yet Republicans pushed for additional tax cuts in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2008. The economy continued to languish even as the Treasury hemorrhaged revenue, which fell to 17.5 percent of the gross domestic product in 2008 from 20.6 percent in 2000. Republicans abolished Paygo in 2002, and spending rose to 20.7 percent of G.D.P. in 2008 from 18.2 percent in 2001.
• Fareed Zakaria, Romney is Wrong on Tax Cuts, The Washington Post (6/7/2012) http://goo.gl/Jfp73 
• Mitt Romney’s first major ad is substantive — and wrong. He tells us that on his first day in office — after approving the Keystone XL pipeline — he will “introduce tax cuts . . . that reward job creators not punish them.” The one idea that is almost certain not to jump-start this economy is a tax cut.// Why can we be sure of this? Because that is what we have done for the past three years. For those who think President Obama’s policies have done little to produce growth, keep in mind that the single largest piece of his policies — in dollar terms — has been tax cuts. They actually began before Obama, with the tax cut passed under the George W. Bush administration in response to the financial crisis in 2008. Then came the stimulus bill, of which tax cuts were the largest chunk by far — one-third of the total. The Department of Transportation, by contrast, got 6 percent of the total to fix infrastructure. // That wasn’t the end of it. There was the payroll tax cut, the small business tax cut, the extension of the payroll tax cut, and so on. The president’s Twitter feed boasted: “President Obama has signed 21 tax cuts to support middle class families.” And how has that worked out? // In the wake of a financial crisis caused by excessive debt, tax cuts are highly unlikely to lead to increased economic activity. People use the money to pay down their debts rather than shop for cars, houses and appliances. As for the idea that job creators are not creating jobs because their taxes are too high, think about it: Would Mitt Romney invest more of his money in American factories if only he had paid less than the 13.9 percent rate he paid last year? Please!
• The Stimulus worked, Bush Tax Cuts didn't, AJC, 7/2010
• What Wastes Money in Stimulus?, Ezra Klein, 9/2010 
• If you want to create jobs and stimulate economic activity, you'd be much better off hiring people to replace the windows in a vacant storefront than giving me a tax cut. 
• Not much stimulus from tax-cut deal - CSMonitor.com (1/3/2011) http://goo.gl/OWKzF

GENERAL/MISCELLANEOUS

• The Austerity Agenda - NYTimes.com (May 31 2012) http://goo.gl/5MkxN -- Krugman outlines what's at stake in the Austerity game... Conservatives' objection/critique isn't with the Stimulus (stimulus works)--they rail against the stimulus b/c of their underlying agenda of undercutting the state ("big government" Randism)--good read: 
• When the private sector is frantically trying to pay down debt, the public sector should do the opposite, spending when the private sector can’t or won’t. By all means, let’s balance our budget once the economy has recovered — but not now. The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity. This isn’t a new insight. So why have so many politicians insisted on pursuing austerity in slump? And why won’t they change course even as experience confirms the lessons of theory and history?
• Well, that’s where it gets interesting. For when you push “austerians” on the badness of their metaphor, they almost always retreat to assertions along the lines of: “But it’s essential that we shrink the size of the state.”
• Austerity vs. Stimulus | On Point with Tom Ashbrook (3/2012) http://bit.ly/FO43WT

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