Stimulus Update

Brad DeLong has the breakdown of things taken out of the no-longer-possible-to-defend-as-stimulating stimulus bill.

Nice to see that no Republican, and precious few Democratic Senators, believe in following even Andrew Samwick’s tepid endorsement:

Congress and the Obama Administration should be very discriminating in what they will spend money on. Bailout money for banks and large firms should go. Every piece of pork in the stimulus bill should go. Every additional tax cut should go. What should remain are the highest value public infrastructure projects, many of which the government has been deferring for years or decades.

which is a minor modification of his previous position:

[A]s I will continue to blog until I am blue in the fingers, the appropriate course of action when the economic downturn appears like it will be unusually severe is to bring planned capital projects forward in time. Doing so allows them to be done more cheaply.

This would be especially true of the non-“highest value” projects, as an Finance person can tell you. (At 2%, it might have a positive NPV; at 5% and full employment, it will, er, “crowd out.”)