Appearing on ABC's This Week, Nancy Pelosi said that Republicans have had the opportunity to be included in crafting the stimulus bill -- even if not many of their ideas have been adopted. "Well, we will take some," said Pelosi. "We will judge them by their ability to create jobs, to -- to help turn the economy around, to stabilize the economy, and to see how much they cost."
John McCain appeared on Faux News and said:
In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, John McCain said he won't vote for President Obama's stimulus package as it stands now. McCain said there need to be more tax cuts for businesses, payroll tax cuts, and for existing tax cuts to be made permanent: " Well, the plan was written by the majority in -- a Democrat majority in the House, primarily. And so, yeah, I think there has to be major rewrites if we want to stimulate the economy."
Mark Thoma brings us a piece by Larry Mishel that basically says McCain and his Republicans colleagues are clueless.
I had made some remarks, more ironic on my blog, about the level of the economic debate. Although I may share some of Prof. Krugman's "political" positions, I underlined that he is contributing to the same appalling level of the debate. For instance his haste conclusions "make it bigger" and/or "make it quicker" are not always justified. I think that this kind of U.S. macro economic debate is not giving a good image of economists profession but it may contribute to explain why we screwed our economies up in the past years.
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