Harold Ford, Jr., former Rep. and Senate candidate from Tennessee and currently the leader of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council (of Bill Clinton fame), has a new editorial on the Politico calling for a new stimulus. You can read it for yourself here: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/24927.html.
Ford stakes out an honerable position: attempting to craft a package that would entice Republicans and Blue Dog Dems concerned about the economy. In fact, his proposals, consisting of loans, not grants, to the States and a "vacation" from payroll taxes, paid for with returned TARP money, were central tenets of the Republican stimulus alternative. Surprisingly, he even advocates sacrificing expanded coverage in health care in order to get both reform and this new stimulus package without further breaking the budget:
It is also critical that we take concrete steps to restore fiscal balance in the long run. New budget estimates for health care reform show that tough measures to rein in spending and curb reimbursements can have a significant impact on the rate of growth in costs. The unfortunate truth is that cost-cutting may need to be prioritized over expansion of coverage, which, in any case, is unsustainable without massive cost savings.
The problem is the last stimulus went too far. If we could refund some of that money, specifically the $200 billion or so that had nothing to do with stimulus and solely sought to further the progressive agenda, conservatives and most of the nation could get behind this. Unfortunately, Pelosi, Reid, and Co. have made it clear to people like Paul Ryan and John Thune who would like to pursue this path that it is not going to happen. If that is the case, we are at such a tipping point budget-wise that the negative effects of any added debt are so great in the long term that the benefits in abating the recession now would be moot when the economy lurches back into a deeper one in 10 years.
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