The CBO is up with a report today showing that the stimulus is responsible for 2.9 million jobs – a show of strength for the $787 billion program.

Instead of making payroll tax fairness a fixture of the Democratic brand, instead of wrapping that into a critique about the inequality that is at the heart of what America needs to fix in order to have sustainable finances again, Democrats chase these little moments to “prove” Republican hypocrisy – and in turn confuse everyone as to what it means to be a Democrat.

Romney is hinting that the economy — the fire — needed not just more stimulus, but longer-lasting stimulus. Instead of pouring on a little gasoline to kick start the fire, we’d needed a slow-burning log that would provide fuel for a longer period.

As ever the Republican brand of bipartisanship is to threaten to burn down the town if the Democrats don’t hand over the matches.

We’ve come to a point where Republicans are rejecting tax cuts – tax cuts! – because the White House supports them and thinks they would help the economy. Maybe this is good for the President politically. He can expose Republicans as interested in crashing the economy as a political end in itself. But that’s a small comfort for the economy.

Now that Osama bin Laden is dead and we find out that he has been living comfortably in Pakistan for a very long time, I really wish this tax payer money we are wasting building almost useless highways in Afghanistan would instead get spent building things in America, ans so create American jobs.

The statement here is that reduced government spending causes slower growth. Well, we know that the 2011 budget cuts spending in the next two quarters. And we know that all Republicans and not a few Democrats want to attach some major spending cuts to the debt limit vote, which needs to take place in the next couple months. So there no doubt that we will see lower federal spending as far as the eye can see. And Austan Goolsbee is saying here that reductions of government spending at the federal level slow down the economy, given the state it’s in right now.

“Audacity Dawn”…? Fantastic. Now our wars have porn names. Though, I suppose, fair enough; shows how we’re properly fucked. Ho ho ho. Anyway, over the past week I’ve been savoring the piquancy of our New American Reality, namely, that in every imaginable area save one, whenever it is proposed that the government commence or continue [...]

I’d expect several trial balloons about what the President will discuss in the State of the Union, and we already have one informed by his recent speeches: “competitiveness.” I agree with both Krugman and Robert Reich on this; if competitiveness is used as a frame to call for new investments, particularly in infrastructure and education, while fending off right-wing austerity, then great. If it’s a way to suggest that manufacturing companies should cut payrolls, or America should pass a bunch of corporate-written free trade agreements, or that we should do whatever’s on the mind of the Jeffrey Immelts of the world, then, well, not so great.

Between California and Illinois, you’re looking at about $45-48 billion dollars to balance budgets, between tax hikes and program cuts. The anti-stimulative effect of that almost totally wipes out the $55-60 billion in stimulative measures that aren’t just extensions of current law in the tax cut deal.