On first glance, this video of Obama declaring his openness to better ideas on the stimulus bill is encouraging stuff. He even invites Paul Krugman to participate. But it's also a little weird:
"Show me," Obama says throughout the clip. "Just show me." But how do folks "show him?" The questioner noted that Larry Summers went to Congress and got an earful from skeptical Democrats. The stimulus is too small, they said, and too much of it goes to tax bucks with insufficient potency. Was that showing him? Paul Krugman argued in The New York Times that Obama's bill roposed numbers are not nearly sufficient to make up for economy's underperformance. He put the math on his blog. Was that "showing" Obama? Obama responded to this by saying that some people say that the bill is too large, and some say the bill is too small. Okay. Who's right? Why? $800 billion is a specific number. Why are we using that number rather than $1.2 trillion, or $500 billion? Larry Summers certainly has some arguments. But they've not been publicly articulated. Which brings us to the reverse question: When will Obama show us? So far, the stimulus bill has seen details leak, but little has been officially announced. Obama's speech was long on arguments for a stimulus package but short on specific information on what this one will look like. And there's not much time. The bill needs to come quickly. It becomes less effective, and thus needs to become bigger, the longer we wait. That puts the Obama team in a tough position. You don't want to release unfinished legislation. But if you move too quickly and urgently with finished, but largely unseen, legislation, legislators and voters alike become mistrustful. It's not an easy needle to thread.