Evaluating the Senate Stimulus Plan

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The Senate stimulus package released this week is a solid improvement over the House/White House compromise plan. The primary reason is that the Senate proposal, tailored by Democratic Senator Max Baucus of Montana, provides low- and moderate-income working families with rebates that are the same size as the rebates going to families at higher income levels. The House package gave low- and moderate-income families smaller rebates than their wealthier counterparts.

Senator Baucus also raised the ceiling on the rebates. Whereas the House plan capped eligibility for the full rebate at $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 for couples, Baucus puts the caps at $150,000 for individuals and $300,000 for couples. The rebates themselves are slightly smaller, however. The House plan gave individuals a maximum of $600 and couples a maximum of $1,200. The Senate rebates max out at $500 and $1,000.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

Under the House bill, a mother with one child who works full time at the minimum wage would receive a rebate of $600, while a mother with one child and an income of $75,000 would receive a rebate of $900, and a married couple with no children and an income of $150,000 would get $1,200. The Finance Committee proposal [pushed by Baucus, the Senate Finance Committee Chair] would reduce or eliminate these disparities.

Another comparison is a little less flattering to the Senate plan. Under the House plan, a couple making a very comfortable $250,000 a year doesn’t get a rebate. Under the Senate version, the couple gets the full rebate of $1,000. Giving the rich rebates is generally considered ineffective stimulus, because they are unlikely to immediately spend the of money given back to them (thus not pumping money into the economy, the purpose of any stimulus plan).

The Senate plan inserts another provision that is particularly progressive. It extends unemployment insurance for 13 weeks for jobless Americans who have exhausted their regular unemployment benefits. And job seekers who live in states with very high unemployment would get an extra 13 on top of that, for a total of 26 additional weeks.

Extending unemployment benefits is considered a key method of economic stimulus, because dollars given to the unemployed are likely to be spent immediately on necessities.

According to the CBPP, America’s unemployed need help:

In January 2008, the overall unemployment rate was 4.9 percent, and the percentage of all unemployed workers who had been unemployed for 27 weeks or more was 18.3 percent. At the start of the last recession in March 2001, by contrast, the unemployment rate was 4.3 percent and the percentage of the unemployed who had been out of work for at least 27 weeks was 11.1 percent.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate