Memo to Democrats

The massive stimulus package put forth by Democrats may knock off a few percentage points off of unemployment numbers but it most likely will not lead the economy out of recession:

President Obama’s mammoth stimulus plan may be the largest single bill Congress has ever considered. But that doesn’t mean it will solve all the economic problems facing the US.

The nation is mired in one of its worst recessions, and is likely to shed so many jobs and so much business production that even an unprecedented jolt of government spending wouldn’t by itself be able to replace the losses.

In a best-case scenario, by the end of 2010 the recovery package would plug about half the gap between actual Gross Domestic Product and what the GDP would be if the economy were healthy, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The corresponding unemployment rate might be 6.8 percent, in CBO’s judgement – two percentage points lower than it otherwise would have been.

“So even with a [stimulus] package of that size, there’s still a substantial shortfall in economic activity relative to what we could be doing,” said CBO director Douglas Elmendorf in Jan. 27 testimony before Congress.

Senate Republicans need to land on this with both feet and insist on less liberal Christmas tree ornaments and more tax cuts that encourage business investment. Ask yourselves this question: At what point does an increasing national deficit adversely effect the value of the dollar and our ability to sell treasury bills (to foreign governments) to cover our massive debt?