Bush and the Republicans turned record surpluses into record deficits, running up trillions and trillions in new debt, destroying this country in the process. They lost big in the last two elections. This country is deep in the toilet and flushing fast thanks to the Republicans, and they want to pour more water on top so we go down faster.

All you lying dittoheads make me sick. And the fact that the 'reasonable' Dems are giving you a voice makes me sick, too.

Sorry about Mr. Nelson. We don't really know why he is grandstanding on this. Your point is right on, especially this, "The Nelson-Collins bill hasn't been justified in terms of virtues so much as in terms of abstract numerical positioning."

And the numbers became so abstract that no one even bothered to ask much what programs were behind them, and what programs did not have their numbers cut.

the simple fact is, there aren't a lot of very intelligent people in congress, and certainly, no one has ever confused ben nelson and susan collins with intelligent people....

It's worth keeping in mind that Obama campaigned in favor of an AMT patch as well as increased small business loans and the Making Work Pay tax credit; he had to do all of this in 2009 anyway to live up to campaign promises so they might as well be passed now so Dems can campaign against Republicans who voted against tax cuts.

I'd like the stimulus to include more spending and agree that the Nelson/Collins/McCaskil reasoning behind what is and is not stimulative is ridiculous (add science funding to your list, which is immediate, generates jobs, and even has long-term benefits). However, focusing on the taxcut/spending ratio is sort of silly since the majority of cuts in the bill (the business cuts are a small fraction) were in the pipeline anyway. Instead, I think a better tactic is to live with tax cuts and simply demand more spending by putting Republicans (and Dem compromisers) why X, Y, and Z aren't stimulative. Obama should have Boehner and McConnel (and Pelosi and Ried) to the White House while the bill is in conference for a meeting open to the press in which he asks exactly which programs won't work and why.

I think the mistake here is simply more basic - Nelson and Collins are on a fool's errand because the larger problem here is the premise, that some combination of tax cuts and a large amount of money in new spending will... well, do whatever mysterious thing people think "stimulus" is supposed to do. Everyone is guessing here, about whether tax cuts will spur the spending, or whether the spending will kickstart growth... and both are probably dubious assumptions, anyway. Apparently, we're smply too far down one path to say "wait a minute this seems crazy" but the fact remains this seems crazy, and arguing over Collins and Nelson seems, well, crazier, when I'd rather see us doing about a half dozen other things (like foreclosure reform, or immediate plans to build affordable housing units) than what we're about to do. Which is why Ezra's final analogy is so apt... being for or against the "mud and brambles bath act" is just so DC when the real problem is thinking we need to bathe in mud. And brambles.

Why is $900 billion a stimulus package they would have to oppose, but $800 billion is a stimulus package they can support?

Yeah, What's a hundres billion ($100,000,000,000.00) to a grown man...right?

And how have the liberal Democrats argued that 900 billion or even a trillion is the right size? They way they arrived at these figures is that is what it will take to fund all of their pet projects they have been wanting for the last 40 years, that's all.

No, one has to keep an eye on cut/spending ratio. In fact this bill should have been all spending because any separate bill of cuts and GOP would salivate.

Fact is Obama is not able to hold tax cuts at 40% as he said he would. The question now is if Dems are also adopting the bankrupt line of GOP 'tax cuts as solution for every problem'; why do we need Obama? Why vote Dems at all? What is wrong with GOP if 'tax cuts' is the only thing which is ever going to happen in this country?

Shame of Nelson and Collins. They screwed this stimulus bill and Dems / Obama are simply witnessing this 'rape of stimulus'.

I like I Drew This's analogy better. It has kittens.

Half-the-kittens centrism is, sadly, alive and well in Washington and apparently Nelson and Collins are proud to be its standard bearers.

@Umesh - Obama needs to cut taxes for most so that he has political cover to raise taxes (or let the Bush cuts expire, technically) for some. It's pretty simple. He ran on it and had to do it this year; and it's good to throw it in this bill because Democrats can say that Republicans uniformly voted against the biggest tax cut for the average American in history (not sure on that, but it's probably true depending on how you define it). Conversely, Democrats (and Obama) won't have to defend raising taxes because it'll never happen. The GOP will continue to introduce bills extending the Bush cuts for everyone that'll never get any attention when they're out of power.

It's better to make the GOP vote against tax cuts than to make a tax-cut-only bill down the line; if the hikes for the upper brackets required new law, obviously he'd have to pass the cuts along with those hikes. A tax-cut-only bill wouldn't do anything other than making a sappy bipartisan moment on the hill.

The problem is that there's not enough spending, and that the spending that's being axed is entirely defensible as stimulus. In reality it's being shoved aside for other spending more than tax cuts. Who knows; hopefully the conference report will just combine the spending from the House and Senate versions and we'll end up with a higher spending/cut ratio than either bill alone.

What's particularly mystifying about it, at least in Nelson's case, is his willingness to throw his own constituents under the bus in order to be Mr. Indispensable. One would think the (nominally Democratic) Senator from Nebraska would think twice about cutting rural broadband or school infrastructure (a serious problem here in the great plains where more schools are being closed than built). But apparently not. Maybe he's jealous of all the attention Chuck Hagel got by being maverick-y....

And how have the liberal Democrats argued that 900 billion or even a trillion is the right size?

There's this thing called GDP, Vajima. You might have heard about it.

From that, you look at unemployment, use Okun's law to calculate a range for the output gap, and work out how to fill it with the tools available.

But keep thinking that it's all about money for black single mothers to get gay-married by drag queens. Gotta keep the fires of hate burning over the winter, you decrepit waste of flesh.

I keep thinking about the chorus from Jonathan Coulton's song "Re:Your Brains", in which a former marketing executive turned brain-eating zombie tries to convince his former co-worker to open up the mall doors:

All we want to do is eat your brains
We're not unreasonable
I mean, no one wants to eat your eyes
All we want to do is eat your brains
We're at an impasse here...
Maybe we should compromise:
If you open up the door,
We'll all come inside and eat your brains

Ben Nelson would apparently find that argument very reasonable.

El "I like the idea of terrorist organizations winning elections" Viajero:

A rough calculation done while the stimulus bill was still but a twinkle in Obama's eye: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/stimulus-math-wonkish/

That gives us an idea of the rough neighborhood the stimulus should be in. I know, I know. Not everyone involved in politics uses random bullshitting as a stand-in for actual knowledge. But you shouldn't let that hurt your feelings; your predicament is widely shared in the Capitol. You're not alone!

Beautiful, Evan.

"Meanwhile I'll report back to my colleagues who are chewing on the door."

Look! It's the Congressional Republican Caucus!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dGF0DsL5K8

I know you guys love to flog the Senate Dems for their obvious weak-kneed-ness etc, but the flame spraying over the current version of the Stimulus could use more relevant information. Doesn't the Senate have a rule requiring 60 votes to pass any legislation involving deficit spending? Also, doesn't it require a 2/3 majority of the Senate to change any Senate rules. I'm not complaining too much, but I think you guys are being overly harsh to the Senate Dem leadership. They absolutely required 60 votes to pass this thing, filibuster or not.

Now about their pathetic showing in the week leading up to the vote, I'm all with you.

Politico has a piece up that includes this intriguing data:

"Back in 1933, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes took a $3.3 billion appropriation - $424 billion in modern dollars - and carved his place in history by leading the Public Works Administration...That amount is roughly equivalent to the $466 billion remaining in new spending in the Senate bill..."

Consider that this year’s spending stimulus in real dollars is “roughly equivalent” to that of 1933 (and presumably the tax cut portion of the bill adds some additional stimulus to that). But in 1933, the nation was looking back on several years—1929 through 1932—in which GDP plunged almost 30% cumulatively, and the rest of 1933 wasn’t looking any better. By contrast, notwithstanding the daily gloom and doom we hear now, we are looking back at a year, 2008, in which GDP rose a little more than 1%, despite a sharp fall off in the 4th quarter. And we’re looking ahead to a year, 2009, in which the Congressional Budget Office and most government and private economists expect—without any stimulus package—further GDP decline during the first half and then a slow renewal of growth in the second half.

The CBO projects that GDP will fall by about 2% in 2009. Couple that with the 1% actual growth in 2008 and it means that this recession will result in a cumulative GDP decline of roughly one percent—compared to that 30% drop just during the early years of the Great Depression. What the impact will be of a stimulus that is “roughly equivalent” to that of 1933 is anyone’s guess—except that it’s damn near certain that it will kick off a hell of a severe inflation.

It’s really time that people on the left and right stopped battling this out with hot air and helped educate voters about these numbers. I’m doing my bit on my blog:

http://thepurplecenter.blogspot.com/

Politico has a piece up that includes this intriguing data:

"Back in 1933, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes took a $3.3 billion appropriation - $424 billion in modern dollars - and carved his place in history by leading the Public Works Administration...That amount is roughly equivalent to the $466 billion remaining in new spending in the Senate bill..."

Consider that this year’s spending stimulus in real dollars is “roughly equivalent” to that of 1933 (and presumably the tax cut portion of the bill adds some additional stimulus to that). But in 1933, the nation was looking back on several years—1929 through 1932—in which GDP plunged almost 30% cumulatively, and the rest of 1933 wasn’t looking any better. By contrast, notwithstanding the daily gloom and doom we hear now, we are looking back at a year, 2008, in which GDP rose a little more than 1%, despite a sharp fall off in the 4th quarter. And we’re looking ahead to a year, 2009, in which the Congressional Budget Office and most government and private economists expect—without any stimulus package—further GDP decline during the first half and then a slow renewal of growth in the second half.

The CBO projects that GDP will fall by about 2% in 2009. Couple that with the 1% actual growth in 2008 and it means that this recession will result in a cumulative GDP decline of roughly one percent—compared to that 30% drop just during the early years of the Great Depression. What the impact will be of a stimulus that is “roughly equivalent” to that of 1933 is anyone’s guess—except that it’s damn near certain that it will kick off a hell of a severe inflation.

It’s really time that people on the left and right stopped battling this out with hot air and helped educate voters about these numbers. I’m doing my bit on my blog:

http://thepurplecenter.blogspot.com/

"For me it's not symbolism, it's an economic matter. At some point it's just too big."

Thank you for your well-reasoned argument, Senator. This is what we pay you for.

What's a bramble?

The trouble w/going after Centrists is they seem to have "baby bear status," i.e. "just right" built into their name. The label itself is a wonderful, if empty, marketing strategy.

Let's all be a little more honest about the exposure the Senate is willing to subject the taxpayers to and how bloated this spending bill really is...

U.S. Taxpayers Risk $9.7 Trillion on Bailouts as Senate Votes

"The $9.7 trillion in pledges would be enough to send a $1,430 check to every man, woman and child alive in the world. It’s 13 times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office data, and is almost enough to pay off every home mortgage loan in the U.S., calculated at $10.5 trillion by the Federal Reserve."

I would go one better Liberal.
ANY executive found to have actively pursued this fraud on the American people will be prosecuted.

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