It was the tax cut nobody noticed!
Yup. And yet this was among the least of the administration and Democratic congress' worries vis-a-vis messaging in 2009.
From some quick research, Clinton and Edwards wanted more government spending as stimulus while Obama was more proposing tax cuts. This is all before the election, but it suggests where their instincts lie. Government spending has a greater economic multiplier then tax cuts unless the economy is running at full tilt. Which it wasn't since it was contracting.
I haven't checked what wikipedia says, but Michael Grunwald in his book The New New Deal paints a picture of Clinton's economic advisers focusing on spending priorities that were not as well thought out as what Obama's advisers had in the first half of 2008; of course there is the problem that Grunwald is relying on the OT reality of the Obama economic team having continued to exist & become more powerful after the middle of 2008, while Hillary's lot dispersed before the collapse of Lehman brothers.
There was a general agreement for a stimulus, but the dispute was over what the stimulus would look like. I imagine bailing out state governments would play a much larger role in an HRC stimulus because she'd depend on Republican votes. There'd be more pork for Republicans to convince them to come over.
Of course, I could see some Red states refusing grants or kicking up a stink about some of the conditions. A completely dumb idea, but so is not expanding Medicaid and many states still did that.
But the reality of the budgeting debate that did happen in 2009 is that it was not carried out in good faith by the GOP in congress. There is copious evidence that they kept moving the goalposts as to what was economically efficacious, with midwestern Republicans like Steve Latourette reneging on their own enunciated infrastructure policies, and all sorts of legit projects being labelled 'porkulus'.
Perhaps the most famous example of this in the longterm is from 2010; newly elected Governor Christie rejecting federal funds for a new tunnel under the Hudson river, because the math showed 'America can't afford it'. Like pumping money into infrastructure to keep WALL STREET functional isn't a good investment that wouldn't be paying for itself by today.
Or, better yet, Bobby Jindal in his SOTU response pooh poohing the need to fund exploding volcano research.
Not to mention there are examples of minor/cancelled projects being labelled as vote buying schemes in a completely distorted fashion.
Furthermore, there's plenty of examples of anti-stimulus voting GOPs later taking personal credit for popular stimulus spending that did come to their home states/districts.
Otherwise, my favourite memory of the distortion of economic policy facts is that both both ARRA and PPACA paid for an upgrade in US health system digital records in 2009, 2010... and, IIRC, Newt Gingrich comes along to seek the GOP nomination in 2011 by proposing to do the same thing, because nobody had obviously ever though of it before. (In effect, while you guys are right to cite 'so, what economic activity stimulates demand?' questions, these questions just didn't really make it into popular discourse in 2009.)
Mitch McConnells 'just say no' obstructionist policy carried the day in both GOP conferences, which is how we end up with, IIRC, one vote each for ARRA from the minorities in both House and Senate.
Long story short; whatever AltHRC does, we have a pretty good idea what the electoral downside is. Can she overcome that downside in 2012?
We don’t need to do anything this radical, or even talk in these terms which will be a huge distraction. But we do need the federal grants to states so they won’t lay off police, fire fighters, and teachers like New Jersey, Oklahoma, and I think a number of other states did around 2010.
Absolutely.
But POLITICS.
I don't want to press the issue so hard as to have this thread moved immediately to chat, but the GOP obstructionist policy of 'We can't afford it, anyway it's not real infrastructure investment spending', that became the party's rallying cause in 2009, to an incredible extent. It was almost their sole reason for carrrying on in their weakest state since the LBJ '64 landslide.
The foundations of the Tea Party were born in response to both Obama's stimulus bill and attempts to pad it out with executive action, literally. That finance reporter screaming from the floor of the Chicago stock exchange, about how real 'Murcans should rise up in revolt... against any attempt at govt aid to private home owners facing foreclosure? That is part of the great obstructionist 'SAY NO' manifesto that Obama faced.
I see no reason why Hillary doesn't face the same ideological/legislative push against any essentially moderate 'Nixon would've happily have done the same/Reagan quietly did do the same' spending policy she proposes.