Good plan, good vision, good politics

„That was an enlivened President Obama we saw earlier this evening - impassioned, indignant, non-professorial. And enlivened he should have been, because the American economy trembles on the brink of a double-dip recession, and the Republican opposition has been seized by an ideology that would erode what remains of the once-great American middle class. Not to mention, Obama’s own political future and that of his party are on the line as well.

For the past week, the White House has been deliberately low-balling its estimates of what the plan the president unveiled tonight would actually include. When word started getting around this afternoon that this new stimulus would be set at $447 billion for the next year - a rate higher than the $787-billion-over-two-years stimulus that Congress enacted in 2009 - leaders of groups representing the Democratic base breathed a sigh of relief. The size and the substance of this new stimulus give Obama and his party the ability not only to rally many of his disenchanted core supporters but to reach out to voters in the middle of the political spectrum.

That’s partly because more than half the package - roughly $240 billion - takes the form of a one-year payroll tax reduction for employees and employers that will be difficult for Republicans to oppose. The tax credits for employees who hire veterans are also a political winner, though the tax credit for companies that hire the long-term unemployed (which in Republican-speak will mean minorities, whose votes they’re not going to get anyway) is one that the GOP is almost sure to resist. Also likely to meet a Republican rejection are Obama’s proposals to build roads and schools, and to fund the retention and rehiring of tens of thousands of teachers.”