Poll Results: We Need A Stimulus Package

Ideal Candidate would have preferred higher participation. However, it's time to report the results of the poll. 60% of respondents chose either "imediate payroll tax rebate" or "rescind Bush tax cuts." 40% of the respondents also chose to increase federal aid to the states to make up for budget shortfalls. Both the tax rebate and aid to the states meet the criteria of "timely," "targeted" and "temporary" established by experts pushing a stimulus. Repealing Bush's tax cuts in 2010 (although perhaps worthy as a stand-alone policy) does nothing to stimulate the economy in the shortrun.

The key issue of the stimulus dbate for our 6th District race is as follows. Jim Gerlach would not know an effective stimulus package if he fell over it. Like many politicians, he sees every issue through the ideological lens of his peer group-- in his case, a supply-side orthodoxy that never saw an economic problem that could not be solved by lower marginal rates. But liberals and progressives will need lean to distinguish sensible policy from ideological preference. If liberal or progressive candidates are going to appeal to the educated opinion leaders in our district, they will have to know how to defend and how not to defend their political preferences. Resisting the Republican push to "make Bush's tax cuts permanent" must be defended on the right grounds (lower marginal rates do not, by themselves, make the economy grow faster and besides no one, even their proponents, believe they will stimulate growth in the near term) and not on the mistaken grounds that repealing them should be a feature of a short-term stimulus bill.

Ideal candidate should promote a stimulus plan having the broadest participation at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder (through payroll tax system) and not larded with largely ineffective tax incentives for private investment.