Monday, June 29, 2009

Obama Econ Advisor Kicks the Stimulus Can, Media Ignores

Why isn’t the stimulus stimulating?  According to Christina Romer, no one ever thought it would, at least in the first six months. “We always knew we were not going to get all that much fiscal impact during the first five to six months,” says Romer in an interview with the Financial Times. Her comments are greatly at odds with what others in the Obama administration have said. One would expect that the cable news chat shows could find a minute or two to discuss this. Put this on the growing list of subjects deserving of more attention today than Billy Mays, God rest his soul.

LARRY SUMMERS, 1.18.09—“Some of the adjustments will take place almost immediately. People will see income in their paychecks, state and local governments will get support to prevent layoffs ... and there are a ton of shovel-ready projects that are out there that aren’t going to have to be cancelled when this program passes.”

DAVID AXELROD, 2.15.09—“I think that there will be signs of activity very quickly … All over the country you’re going to see shovels in the ground. You’re going to see construction projects under way. The other thing you’re going to see are people not being laid off - police and firefighters and teachers - because states now are going to have funding to forestall those kinds of things.”

JOE BIDEN, 5.09—“Since enactment, we have made it easier to balance family budgets as well. Within days, we began providing an extra $25 a week in unemployment benefits for individuals dealing with a job loss and trimmed COBRA health insurance costs by 65 percent. Within weeks, we increased the take-home pay of 95 percent of working families through our Making Work Pay tax relief program. And earlier this month, we began mailing $250 payments to 54 million seniors across the country offering needed relief.”

CHRISTINA ROMER, 6.28.09—“We always knew we were not going to get all that much fiscal impact during the first five to six months … The big impact starts to hit from about now onwards.”

Topics: barack-obama, stimulus, david-axelrod, larry-summers, christina-romer