Recently, both Obama and Romney have basically given what may turn out to be competing economic plans in 2012 (As of the date of this post, I have yet to see a serious economic plan from Rick Perry). Obama released his plan during a speech on Thursday night (9-8-11). Mitt Romney has already released his plan on his website. This post is a collection of a few articles on those plans.
Obama's Jobs Bill:
Paul Krugman shared his thoughts on Obama's new jobs bill in a New York Times Op-Ed. It is not as big as Krugman wants and also focuses too heavily on tax cuts. However, it is bold and would surely make significant progress towards ending this financial crisis. However, it is also surely DOA in the house and filibuster-bait in the Senate. Also, Krugman shared his thoughts on Romney's jobs bill, which he described as "as 59 bullet points with nothing there".
Self-proclaimed "Stimulus Skeptic" David Brooks also shared his thoughts on Obama's new jobs bill as well. Due to the real threat of a double dip recession, he conceded that the "president has earned a second date. He’s put together a moderate set of stimulus ideas. His plan may not be enough to jolt prosperity, but it might maintain its current slow growth.
The Brookings Institution has also chimed in on the jobs bill, pointing out how most of the President's proposals are bi-partisan (many coming from the Conservative US Chamber of Commerce). They also applauded Obama for including both short term stimulus and long term deficit reduction in the plan. In addition, they provided a few recommendations for additional bi-partisan plans to aid in recovery. However, they also pointed out that, while the president's speech was eloquent, the jobs bill may not be enough to really heal the economy.
The AP pointed out the challenges of using future deficit reduction to pay for a current plan in an informal "Fact Check." However, as Brookings has pointed out before, such a plan may be the only real viable solution to both the US' economic and fiscal crises. The AP also reiterated the same problem that Krugman pointed out: the plan has little chance of success. As for the last fact check in the article, the AP provided practically no context as to how much of the plan will be dedicated to the proposed national infrastructure bank.
The Washington Post Fact Checker, Glen Kessler, noticed that a lot of the plan seemed a bit too familiar (flashback to 2009). He even ended the article with a fun little quiz.
Update 9-12-11: FactCheck shows that not all of Obama's ideas have had Republican support in the past.
Romney's Economic Plan:
Romney's economic plan gives us a good look at the political limits of what the best Republican economic plan can do. Romney's plan does a good job focusing on long term growth, which is generally a Republican strength. However, as Frum points out, Romney's plan is generally quiet about how to get us out of our current recession. In fact, his ideas will likely exacerbate the problem. This is a major Republican handicap since we will likely be stuck with over 10 million unemployed/underemployed in 2013, when a Republican could potentially take office.
Greg Mankiw, adviser to Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, presented his ideas for recovery. He suggested focusing not just on our short-run problems, but on our long-run problems as well. However, as David Frum and Paul Krugman have already pointed out, Romney's economic plan seems to focus exclusively on long-run issues.
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