Yes, I mentioned it when ARRA slouched across the landscape, emitting its foul exhaust.
Nice of Obama to confirm. Unless, of course, you're among the TWENTY PERCENT of US men between 25-54 years old who are un-employed.
All told, as of the end of November 2009, about 50 percent of Recovery Act funds—or $395 billion—has been either obligated or is providing assistance directly to Americans in the form of tax relief. By design, the bulk of the remaining 50 percent of Recovery Act funds will be deployed in the coming months of 2010 and during the beginning of 2011 to support additional job creation when our economy continues to need a boost.
And of course, there is the matter of November 2010 elections. But we won't mention that.
"by design" the ARRA provided immediate assistance to Americans in the form of (rather ineffective) tax cuts and unemployment benefit extensions. The bulk of infrastructure spending takes longer to distribute as anyone who deals in the construction industry understands.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, the rather small amount of infrastructure spending isn't going to come close to offsetting the output gap necessary in returning to anything close to full employement.
As you said before, dadster, a WWIII-type spending program would be more effective in quickly reducing unemployement, hiking tax receipts and would quicken the pace of our necessary deleveraging process in the private sector.
We're still worried about the imaginary inflation boogieman unfortunately.
The design here was to bolster re-election chances for the (D) majority. While infra takes a bit of time, once it's up, there are a lot of bodies on site.
ReplyDeleteThe (D) folk hoped that the 'bodies on site' would be sufficient for re-election, and there are a LOT of propaganda outlets ready to help them out (Small Biz Times in Milwaukee is one.)
As you know, most road-projects are NOT that long on planning.
I would agree that the design of ARRA had Nov. 2010 in mind. No question.
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