Of course, I still express extreme skepticism that eight hundred billion dollars of pork will help anything, but that is neither here nor there.
Continuing this conversation over here, because this is a better thread for the "Will the stimulus work?" question.
First of all, "eight hundred billion dollars of pork" is a pretty big exaggeration; in addition to the
$246,869,000,000 in tax cuts, a breakdown of the
spending shows quite a lot of that money going directly toward things like job creation and unemployment insurance, which are pretty clearly relevant to a failing economy.
As for the rest, it's not all perfect. I've thought the "give everyone a check" part of it was stupid from the get-go; that's not going to stimulate the economy. People who need the money are going to spend it on rent; people who don't, well, don't need it.
And there are plenty of lines in there that aren't really directly relevant to the economy and are pet projects. Some are things I agree with, some aren't.
As far as the notion of pork -- that's a matter of perspective. The truth is that states elect representatives to look out for them, and what looks like pork to somebody in one state may look like something desperately needed to the people who are actually receiving it. Arizona's budget is in pretty miserable shape right now, and one guess where the first and deepest cuts are going. Hint: the stimulus plan has $48,420,000,000 in federal money going toward it.
All that said, if you don't expect the stimulus to help, what would you recommend as an alternative?
And if you say "tax cuts", I will hit you.