Posted by
Always To The Right on Thursday, February 19, 2009 1:31:11 AM
Seven-hundred eighty-seven billion dollars apparently doesn't go as
far as it used to. Even before the ink was dry on the stimulus bill,
the president and his deputies were hinting it may not work as promised.
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He predicted that "once Congress passes this plan and I sign it into
law, a new wave of innovation, activity and construction will be
unleashed all across America."
Now with the $787 billion on the books — an amount greater than the
entire federal budget in 1982 — the administration is suddenly in full
expectation-lowering mode, throwing out strong hints that it may have
to go back for second helpings in a matter of months.
"Signing Stimulus, Obama Doesn't Rule Out More," is how the New York
Times put it. And, indeed, Obama sounded almost dour about the bill he
had so aggressively pushed to get passed.
Obama deputies were even more downbeat. Last weekend, after the bill
was safely through Congress, administration press secretary Robert
Gibbs predicted that the "economy is going to get worse before it gets
better."
Both he and senior adviser David Axelrod are now saying that the
unemployment rate is likely to go as high as 10%, even with the
stimulus.