The Porkulus Battle

Today the Porkulus battle is joined in earnest with the Senate voting on whether to invoke cloture, and the president heads off to Elkhart, IN for a group whine. He will then return to D.C. mess up the prime time sweeps month TV schedule (at least in the Midwest and East) with a press conference to promote the massive spending bill. Here's ABC's take:

President Obama returned from his first getaway to Camp David on Sunday to face an urgent priority: pressuring Congress to avert a stimulus stalemate.

The Senate is poised to pass a compromise $827 billion version as soon as Tuesday. The legislation would have to be reconciled with the very different $819 billion version already approved by the House.

Some economists question whether either is enough.

"It's possible that this won't be enough to jump start the economy -- that, in fact, policy makers will have to come back and provide more help to the economy before all is said and done," Mark Zandi, economist with Moody's economy.com, told ABC News in an interview.

Meanwhile the Congressional Budget Office says the recession will end in 2009 even if no Porkulus bill is passed:

CBO anticipates that the current recession, which started in December 2007, will last until the second half of 2009, making it the longest recession since World War II. (The longest such recessions otherwise, the 1973–1974 and 1981–1982 recessions, both lasted 16 months. If the current recession were to continue beyond midyear, it would last at least 19 months.) It could also be the deepest recession during the postwar period: By CBO’s estimates, economic output over the next two years will average 6.8 percent below its potential—that is, the level of output that would be produced if the economy’s resources were fully employed (see Figure 1). This ecession, however, may not result in the highest unemployment rate. That rate, in CBO’s forecast, rises to 9.2 percent by early 2010 (up from a low of 4.4 percent at the end of 2006) but is still below the 10.8 percent rate seen near the end of the 1981–1982 recession.

In other words this is not the worst economy since the Great Depression, and the laws of economics will not be revoked if a Porkulus Bill is not passed (unlike what The One told us). The economy will recover - it always does.

And don't forget the report from the other day in which the CBO projected the Porkulus Bill would result in a worse economic situation than if we did nothing. Given that the CBO is run by the Democrats, you'd think they'd listen to them.

But alas, it's more important to do something massively huge that will accomplish nothing than to be perceived as doing nothing. Such is Washington these days.