Arnold Kling: No, stimulus delayed due to design
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The Obama administration says the Recovery Act created or saved 640,000 jobs through September. Here's a state-by-state breakdown.
Very little of the stimulus kicks in this year. So if you're trying to say empirically is it working or not, you can't because so little has happened.
If economists were designing it, they would design it so most of it would start soon. But for whatever reason, the administration decided to outsource the policy to congressional leadership. Congressional leadership focused more on what would advantage themselves politically than what would get the economy going.
If you have a second [stimulus] that's also delayed it's just compounding the problem. Imagine if you have another stimulus: spending will not kick in until 2011, 2012. At some point you're going to be kicking in the spending late in the recovery rather than in the middle of the recession.
NEXT: Lawrence Mishel: Yes, families need help
