Stimulus Fail?

Via Yglesias:

Now I think the Obama administration is going to pay a price for not having acknowledged the problems with the stimulus bill they signed in January. A minority of observers thought a stimulus would be a bad idea. A majority of analysts favored stimulus, and the analytic framework they used to support that conclusion suggested a stimulus that was substantially larger than the one enacted by congress. If the administration felt that was the best they could get, then fine—you sign the bill and take what you can get. But they should have clearly and publicly articulated that while the ARRA was a useful step, it would likely prove inadequate to the scale of the problem. Then in the event that it did prove inadequate, they could say they had pointed this out at the time and maybe the Senate should stop ruining everything.

I've written before HERE that the stimulus is something that, if undershot, is more likely to fail:

I've said before that something like seems to demand overshooting, not under-shooting. First of all, let's be clear - none of us has any idea what the "perfect number" for any stimulus would be. But if, say, $200B and $700B are equally arbitrary, I would think that the danger of going for the $200B would be that if it fails, you've negated the worth of that $200B, you've ADDED to the amount that would then be needed, and you're left sitting there further on down the road with no plan or bill that works. So basically you've thrown $200B into a well cause you think you wanna save some money, and now it's gonna exponentially cost more to start over again. Whereas with the $700B maybe that's too much, but at least there's the chance that you've given a plan enough support to actually work in the first place. So even if after the theoretical dust settles and we see that we only needed $500B, at least we have a economy that has recovered and then $200B left over to put to good use and make things even more robust.

And of course the stimulus not doing so great would be something the GOP can pat itself on the back and run on in 2010. Like Republican voters voting in incompetent jagoffs knowing they'll fail so that they can claim government is hopelessly inept, now Republicans are trying to turn bills into legislation (helped by the Democrats rolling over at every possible moment) that has a better chance at failing rather than succeeding, knowing their voters won't bother to ask themselves "well, we're all still in the shitter, maybe this congressman isn't actually helping if his main job was to make sure everything fails?" It will be amazing to watch if the GOP runs the table on the "Things really sucked for you, then we watered down legislation so that things STILL sucked for you, and will continue to fight to keep things in the shitter for you" campaign.

More of my yapping HERE.