Dept. of Unsolicited Political Advice -- today's open thread

The economic stimulus bill -- thanks to cash it's working:

Imagine if, one year ago, Congress had passed a stimulus bill that really worked.

Let's say this bill had started spending money within a matter of weeks and had rapidly helped the economy. Let's also imagine it was large enough to have had a huge impact on jobs — employing something like two million people who would otherwise be unemployed right now.

If that had happened, what would the economy look like today?

Well, it would look almost exactly as it does now. Because those nice descriptions of the stimulus that I just gave aren't hypothetical. They are descriptions of the actual bill.

Hopefully, the White House and Congress can build on this momentum and pass a real jobs bill in 2010. Meanwhile, one thing that I don't get, politically, about the $800-billion-plus program that passed last year. A sizable chunk of those dollars went into tax cuts for most Americans. That was a controversial aspect of the bill -- some economists wanted even more for job creation -- but the bottom line is that the tax cuts are there. And yet polls show that most Americans aren't even aware of it.

Huh? How politically inept is that to cut taxes and not take political credit for it -- isn't that the reason that politicans cut taxes all the time in the first place?! My unsolicited advice is that maybe in April, when people are filing their returns and the Tea Partiers emerge from hibernation, the Obama people figure out a way to bang the drums on their 2009 tax cut. Maybe they could reach out to the Tea Parties and see if they're willing to give the money back toward their pet cause of deficit reduction...I'm sure they'd go for that. :-)