The American Spectator

The Spectacle Blog

The stimulus has so far failed to live up the Obama administration's promises. That's not up for debate; they promised that the stimulus package would cap unemployment at 8 percent for June, and unemployment reached 9.5 percent.

The question that raises is whether those numbers indicate that the stimulus was a failure, and should be cancelled, or that the stimulus was too small, and we need another stimulus on top of the $787 billiion already slated to be spent.

In the latest go round, Casey Mulligan of Chicago takes the first view in the NY Times Economix blog. Menzie Chinn of the University of Wisconsin rebuts him.

But they're debating over whether to have a second stimulus. Before we as a country sign up for another round of debt and big government, I think that we should at least frame the debate correctly. It would be a third stimulus. The recession began at the end of 2007, and George W. Bush's stimulus was passed in February of 2008.