Time’s Jay-Newton Small on spending:
As qualms about the debt take a back seat to worries about a depression, the scope of the stimulus plan has grown to include everything from expanding Pell grants for college students and health care for the unemployed to investments in renewable energies. Instead of temporary measures meant to prop up the sagging economy over just the next two years, much of what has been proposed so far looks like a laundry list of Obama campaign promises. If passed, Obama will get, in one fell swoop, a running start on large swathes of his long-term agenda, the ultimate cost of which no one yet knows.
Whatever happened to that promised “net spending cut?” Wait, I know — Rahm Emanuel promised Obama wouldn’t let the financial crisis “go to waste.” It seems that’s one promise Obama has every intention of keeping.
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