Time for a second stimulus? | The Week

The economic stimulus package hasn't had the time to kick in yet, said Christopher Beam in _Slate_, but already Washington is buzzing with talk of a second stimulus, as unemployment

figures show the economy is losing more jobs then expected. The Obama administration is holding back, for now. "Politically speaking, though, it's hard to imagine the

administration standing pat if jobs continue to hemorrhage." "Democrats are all over the map on the stimulus and the possibility of a sequel," said Victoria McGrane in

_Politico_, "and it’s not hard to see why: When it comes to a second stimulus, they may be damned if they do and damned if they don’t." There's growing talk that the first

stimulus wasn't enough, but the public has little appetite for a second round. Democrats insist that the problem is simply that George W. Bush left them a worse economy than they

thought, said John Lott in Fox News. But "the alternative explanation should be obvious: The stimulus made things worse." It's nonsense to argue that the first stimulus was

too small—the real problem was that "spending almost a $1 trillion on various stimulus projects means moving a lot of resources from where the private sector would have spent it,

eliminating the jobs many people currently have." SUBSCRIBE TO THE WEEK Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives. SUBSCRIBE

& SAVE SIGN UP FOR THE WEEK'S FREE NEWSLETTERS From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. From our

morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. Talk about nonsense, said Paul Krugman in _The New York Times_. Most of the

stimulus money hasn't even been spent yet—it was never expected to do much this soon. "The problem, instead, is that the hole the stimulus needs to fill is much bigger than

predicted. That—coupled with the fact that yes, stimulus takes time to work—is the reason for a second round, ASAP." It would help if the cheerleaders for such a "huge fiscal

expansion" let us know how much money we're talking about, said Joe Wiesenthal in _The Business Insider_. So, please, Mr. Krugman, tell the rest of us if "there's such a

thing as a too-big stimulus. We don't hear anyone going around advocating, say, $5 trillion in new spending, even though technically speaking that would create a lot of demand and

economic activity. So what is the cap, and how do we know?" A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com