Economic stimulus near. Who will be helped?

The Associated Press

A rare moment of bipartisanship: Everybody wants to improve the economy.

Featured Topic | Posted 32 weeks 3 days ago

Economic stimulus near. Who will be helped?

Democrats and Republicans in Washington D.C. usually take every opportunity to oppose each other. But now we're seeing a rare exception to the rule -- everybody is working together to come up with a stimulus package to get the economy going again.

Will the stimulus package -- now estimated at $145 billion -- help the people who need it most? And just how long will the bad times last?

Ben likes: Real medicine

Investor's Business Daily

Handing out a wad of cash may not hurt, but it's no lasting cure to the economy's woes. Some principled Republicans in Congress have joined the stimulus debate with measures that go beyond feel-good fixes. The White House and congressional Republicans are clashing with the Democrats who control Congress over how to boost the economy. Along with rebate checks of $1,600 for most families proposed by the Bush administration as part of a $145 billion stimulus, Democratic leaders want food stamp relief, extended jobless benefits and social welfare spending.

Just as how and where money gets spent was of no concern to Keynes, it seems just as irrelevant in the minds of today's Democrats. The economic history of recent decades should teach us all that the private sector does not operate with such mindlessness.

Joel likes: Desperately seeking stimulus

Barbara Ehrenreich/The Nation

Our economy--with its dizzying bubbles, wild lending sprees, reckless downsizings and planet-wide hyper-sensitivity--has gotten too far disconnected from ordinary human needs. We could take the current crisis as an opportunity to fix that, at least in part, by shoring up government support for the needy and the dislocated. Or we can wait around and watch while the appropriate imagery gets nasty, as this ghostly creature, "the economy," starts acting like a nymphomaniac junkie in withdrawal.