Do that to me one more time

Posted on | July 16, 2008 | Comments Off

(Wow, talk about giving away my age … !)

So, do we need further economic stimulus from our friends in Washington?

The Democratic congressional leadership seems to think so, according to yesterday’s Congressional Quarterly Midday Update. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and other members of the House leadership spent a chunk of time yesterday meeting with private sector economists and came away from that meeting convinced that further action is needed.

As of right now, the proposed stimulus would touch on some things they’ve been kicking around on Capital Hill for awhile now:

Hoyer said the package would include elements already widely discussed — more infrastructure funding, heating assistance for low-income Americans, more money for food stamps and for state Medicaid programs. Pelosi said the proposal also could include another round of rebates for taxpayers, but she made no commitments.

“We’ll have to work in a bipartisan way because this legislation must be signed into law,” she said.

President Bush, however, remains unconvinced that the government needs to do anything further — presumably because he did not attend the aforementioned meeting. He suggested instead that Congress is acting prematurely, before they’ve had a chance to see if the package enacted in February has an effect.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that the rebate checks have had only a marginal effect — and, with retail sales failing to climb to even 1% month over month growth for half a year now, it’s possible that they only thing they did was to stave off actual declines in retail sales. I don’t know about you, but I don’t personally know anybody who got their rebate check and decided to sit on it. Maybe that’s because I don’t get out enough.

The business goodies in the bill may indeed take a bit longer to kick in and that’s probably what Mr. Bush is talking about. My only problem with all this is the fact that, if they want to do anything more, they don’t want to wait too long.

Getting any kind of stimulus passed and signed into law (especially if not everyone is agreed on the need for it, or the need to pay for it) will be a time-consuming endeavor. If they wait long enough, by the time it kicks it, it’ll be too late.

Given the kinds of things they talking about in the context of this stimulus package, and given congressional amnesia when it comes to small businesses and big issues, I don’t know that I’d expect much in the way of small business goodies or anything at all for microbusinesses. Then again, depending on how they structure all of this stuff, there may be some business opportunities in things like infrastructure spending for the attentive would-be contractor.

According to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Senate would not be able to consider this sort of thing before September.

[tags]economy, economic stimulus package, politics, microbusiness[/tags]