Stimulus Remains Unpopular Even As It Boosts Growth
六个月前，美国经济大幅下滑之际，奥巴马总统和国会开出了7,870亿美元的减税和增加开支药方。如今，尽管距离健康发展还很遥远，但经济已经有所好转。不过，财政刺激方案越来越受到冷遇。在《华尔街日报》/NBC News今年1月份调查对刺激方案的看法时，支持该方案的受访者为43%，反对者占27%。而当7月份再问同样的问题时，支持者和反对者却分别占到了34%和43%。而这一计划没有伤害各方已有利益──不会抵消税收的增加或支出的削减。公众对刺激方案的怀疑如今给奥巴马利用政府权限改革医疗卫生避免全球变暖和修复美国教育体制的雄心蒙上了阴影。认为财政刺激是个错误的理由是站不住脚的。10年前，经济学家建议政治家应该将遏制衰退的任务交给美国联邦储备委员会(Federal Reserve)及其降息措施。二战后所发生衰退的平均持续时间是10个月，通常都在国会采取行动前就结束了。原：刺激划：主意好，作不佳7,870美元的刺激划避免了的直下滑，但是目前划已不像6月前那么倍受迎了。大•塞(David Wessel)是因它的市操作 推不佳。但这次真的不同以往。在奥巴马上任时，经济衰退已经持续一年多时间了，美联储也已将利率下调到了零，但经济仍在大幅下滑。加州大学伯克利分校经济学家奥尔巴赫(Alan Auerbach)说，如果需要一个财政刺激的理由的话，这就是理由。他将在本周末美联储在怀俄明州杰克逊霍尔举行的年会上发表对刺激方案的评估意见。更艰难的问题是：刺激方案发挥作用了吗？它在经济上和政治上都是精心设计的吗？赤字怎么办？正如共和党人每天都指出的，就业人数仍在萎缩。虽然最终分析还要等待时间的推移，但研究机构Macroeconomic Advisers和Global Insight的预测人士估计，刺激方案平均将使今年和明年的经济增长率平均提高一个百分点以上。虽然这不足以抵消经济衰退的不利影响，但它带来的好处比政府避免止赎等努力更大。那么，为什么没有人相信刺激方案能有助于经济呢？众议员弗兰克(Barney Frank)有一个一针见血的解释。他在上个月一次听证会上说，作为一名民选政府人员，我不是第一次羡慕经济学家了。他们可以对发生了什么和可能发生什么进行对比。而政治家不能。他说，从来没有人是凭借写着“没有我会更糟”这样的小标语当选的。你也许可以凭此获得大学终身教授的职位，但不能以此赢得选举。事实证明，关键是如何推销自己的政策。白宫此前承诺刺激政策能够挽救或创造370万个工作岗位，而这一说法注定会产生适得其反的效果，实际上也的确如此。正如花旗集团(Citigroup)分析师威汀(Steven Wieting)近期所观察到的，市场普遍认为经济刺激举措的第一部分──大约750亿美元的减税以及向个人一次性付款──没有取得实际成效。不过，美国政府推出了10亿美元的“以旧换新”项目因扭转了汽车行业销量急剧下滑的势头而受到赞誉；鉴于汽车行业此前销量如此疲软，出现回升几乎是必然的。或许奥巴马之前应当直接向消费者邮寄优惠券，而不是降低他们的收入所得税。为了推动国会迅速批准刺激计划，奥巴马政府作出了一个初步战术性决策：让国会来解决细节问题。这确实有利于刺激计划迅速获得实施，但也令刺激计划打上了民主党随意挥霍的烙印，而非奥巴马“变革”的成果。对公众而言，这更像是众议院议长佩洛西(Nancy Pelosi)的刺激计划，而不是奥巴马的政策。难怪这项计划不受欢迎。佩洛西的民意支持率仅为25%，反对率却高达48%。而奥巴马的支持率为55%，反对率为34%。刺激计划并没有像教科书所建议的那样，尽可能迅速地解决经济问题。刺激计划大约三分之一的资金用在减税上，这方面举措迅速产生了效果。另有三分之一资金是向州地方政府以及个人提供救助，这部分措施步伐稍慢。不过，还有三分之一是投资基础设施教育以及其他项目，这部分举措可能要数月甚至数年才能见到成效。毫无疑问，奥巴马和国会盟友是借助刺激计划来推行他们的开支议程。不过，尽管这点在1月份表现的还不明显，但现在看来，实施缓慢的联邦刺激计划是受到欢迎的。美国经济走出衰退的过程看起来痛苦且缓慢，而联邦支出将有助于抵消州和地方预算持续紧缩的状况。如果六个月后，美国就业市场仍然状况低迷，奥巴马可能会考虑推出另一项刺激计划－－旨在鼓励招聘的措施。但奥巴马也承认，美国政府不能一直大举借款，资金有限的状况将束缚他的手脚。国际货币基金组织(IMF)首席经济学家布兰查德(Olivier Blanchard)本周提出了一条出路。他表示，据自己观察，美国政府承诺福利的成本预期增幅是当前危机所带来财政代价的10倍。他表示，即便政府福利项目的增幅略有下滑，都可以为持续的刺激举措带来明显的财政资金空间。但是，如果没有痛苦的刺激计划都不受欢迎，不妨想像一下要向公众推销这个计划会有多么困难。David Wessel相关阅读科技行业将引领经济复苏？ 2009-08-19收紧贷款标准的美国银行有所减少 2009-08-18美国经济复苏的三种可能：快慢短 2009-08-18美联储维持利率不变，认为经济正在企稳 2009-08-13
Six months ago, as the U.S. economy was sinking, President Barack Obama and Congress prescribed a $787-billion dose of tax cuts and spending increases.Today, the economy, though far from healthy, is better. The fiscal stimulus, however, is increasingly unpopular. When The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll asked in January if the stimulus was a good idea or not, respondents said yes by 43% to 27%. When the question was asked in July, only 34% said yes and 43% saidno.And that's for a pain-free initiative -- no offsetting tax increases or spending cuts. Public skepticism over the stimulus now clouds Mr. Obama's ambitions to use the power of government to reshape health care, avoid global warming and repair American education.The case that fiscal stimulus was a mistake altogether is weak. A decade ago, economists counseled that politicians should leave recession-fighting to the Federal Reserve and its interest-rate cuts. With the average length of a post-World War II recession at 10 months, downturns usually ended before Congress acted.This time was, truly, different. The recession was more than a year old when Mr. Obama took office, the Fed already had cut interest rates to zero and the economy was still in free fall. 'If ever there was a case for a fiscal stimulus, this was it,' says Alan Auerbach, a University of California, Berkeley, economist who will kick off an appraisal of the stimulus at this weekend's Fed retreat at Jackson Hole, Wyo.The tougher questions are: Is the stimulus working? Was it well-designed, both economically and politically? And what about the deficit?As Republicans point out daily, payrolls are still shrinking. Although definitive analysis awaits the passage of time, forecasters at Macroeconomic Advisers and Global Insight estimate the stimulus will add a welcome one percentage point or more, on average, to growth this year and next. That's not enough to offset the ill effects of the recession, but it's doing a lot more good than, say, administration efforts to avoid foreclosures.So why don't people believe the stimulus has helped? Rep. Barney Frank has one sharp explanation. 'Not for the first time as an elected official, I envy economists,' he said at a hearing last month. 'They can contrast what happened to what would have happened.' Politicians can't. 'No one has ever gotten elected where the bumper sticker said, 'It would have been worse without me,'' he said. 'You probably can get tenure with that. But you can't win office.'Marketing, it turns out, matters. Promising that the stimulus would save or create 3.7 million jobs, as the White House did, was bound to backfire, and it has. As Citigroup's Steven Wieting observed recently, the first installment of the stimulus -- about $75 billion in tax cuts and one-time payments for individuals -- is widely assumed to have had no effect. But a $1 billion 'cash for clunkers' program gets credit for turning around an auto industry that was selling so few cars that an upturn was inevitable at some point. Maybe Mr. Obama should have mailed coupons instead of reducing the tax bite on paychecks.To get quick congressional approval of the stimulus, the Obama White House made an early tactical decision: Let Congress handle details. It did make for swift enactment, but it branded the stimulus as a product not of 'change' but of liberal Democratic profligacy. To the public, this is more House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's stimulus than Barack Obama's. No wonder it's unpopular. Her approval ratings are 25% positive, 48% negative. Mr. Obama's are 55% positive, 34% negative.The stimulus wasn't crafted, as textbooks advise, to hit the economy as quickly as possible. Roughly one-third was tax cuts, which were quick-acting. One-third was aid to state and local governments and individuals, which were only slightly slower. But one-third was infrastructure, education and other spending that won't show up for many months, or even years. There's no doubt that Mr. Obama and congressional allies used the stimulus as a way to pursue their spending agenda. Still, though it wasn't obvious in January, it now looks like a slow-acting federal stimulus is welcome. The climb out of the recession looks to be painfully slow, and the federal spending will help offset persistent tightening in state and local budgets.In six months, if the job market is still languishing, the president may eye another dose of stimulus, one aimed at encouraging hiring. But Mr. Obama admits that the U.S. government can't keep borrowing as it has been, and that will constrain him. The International Monetary Fund's chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, offered one way out this week. Noting that the projected increases in the cost of promised government benefits are 10 times the fiscal cost of the current crisis, he observed, 'Even a modest cut in the growth rate of entitlement programs can buy substantial fiscal space for continuing stimulus.'But if pain-free stimulus isn't popular, imagine how hard it would be to sell that package to the public.David Wessel
Six months ago, as the U.S. economy was sinking, President Barack Obama and Congress prescribed a $787-billion dose of tax cuts and spending increases.Today, the economy, though far from healthy, is better. The fiscal stimulus, however, is increasingly unpopular. When The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll asked in January if the stimulus was a good idea or not, respondents said yes by 43% to 27%. When the question was asked in July, only 34% said yes and 43% saidno.And that's for a pain-free initiative -- no offsetting tax increases or spending cuts. Public skepticism over the stimulus now clouds Mr. Obama's ambitions to use the power of government to reshape health care, avoid global warming and repair American education.The case that fiscal stimulus was a mistake altogether is weak. A decade ago, economists counseled that politicians should leave recession-fighting to the Federal Reserve and its interest-rate cuts. With the average length of a post-World War II recession at 10 months, downturns usually ended before Congress acted.This time was, truly, different. The recession was more than a year old when Mr. Obama took office, the Fed already had cut interest rates to zero and the economy was still in free fall. 'If ever there was a case for a fiscal stimulus, this was it,' says Alan Auerbach, a University of California, Berkeley, economist who will kick off an appraisal of the stimulus at this weekend's Fed retreat at Jackson Hole, Wyo.The tougher questions are: Is the stimulus working? Was it well-designed, both economically and politically? And what about the deficit?As Republicans point out daily, payrolls are still shrinking. Although definitive analysis awaits the passage of time, forecasters at Macroeconomic Advisers and Global Insight estimate the stimulus will add a welcome one percentage point or more, on average, to growth this year and next. That's not enough to offset the ill effects of the recession, but it's doing a lot more good than, say, administration efforts to avoid foreclosures.So why don't people believe the stimulus has helped? Rep. Barney Frank has one sharp explanation. 'Not for the first time as an elected official, I envy economists,' he said at a hearing last month. 'They can contrast what happened to what would have happened.' Politicians can't. 'No one has ever gotten elected where the bumper sticker said, 'It would have been worse without me,'' he said. 'You probably can get tenure with that. But you can't win office.'Marketing, it turns out, matters. Promising that the stimulus would save or create 3.7 million jobs, as the White House did, was bound to backfire, and it has. As Citigroup's Steven Wieting observed recently, the first installment of the stimulus -- about $75 billion in tax cuts and one-time payments for individuals -- is widely assumed to have had no effect. But a $1 billion 'cash for clunkers' program gets credit for turning around an auto industry that was selling so few cars that an upturn was inevitable at some point. Maybe Mr. Obama should have mailed coupons instead of reducing the tax bite on paychecks.To get quick congressional approval of the stimulus, the Obama White House made an early tactical decision: Let Congress handle details. It did make for swift enactment, but it branded the stimulus as a product not of 'change' but of liberal Democratic profligacy. To the public, this is more House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's stimulus than Barack Obama's. No wonder it's unpopular. Her approval ratings are 25% positive, 48% negative. Mr. Obama's are 55% positive, 34% negative.The stimulus wasn't crafted, as textbooks advise, to hit the economy as quickly as possible. Roughly one-third was tax cuts, which were quick-acting. One-third was aid to state and local governments and individuals, which were only slightly slower. But one-third was infrastructure, education and other spending that won't show up for many months, or even years. There's no doubt that Mr. Obama and congressional allies used the stimulus as a way to pursue their spending agenda. Still, though it wasn't obvious in January, it now looks like a slow-acting federal stimulus is welcome. The climb out of the recession looks to be painfully slow, and the federal spending will help offset persistent tightening in state and local budgets.In six months, if the job market is still languishing, the president may eye another dose of stimulus, one aimed at encouraging hiring. But Mr. Obama admits that the U.S. government can't keep borrowing as it has been, and that will constrain him. The International Monetary Fund's chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, offered one way out this week. Noting that the projected increases in the cost of promised government benefits are 10 times the fiscal cost of the current crisis, he observed, 'Even a modest cut in the growth rate of entitlement programs can buy substantial fiscal space for continuing stimulus.'But if pain-free stimulus isn't popular, imagine how hard it would be to sell that package to the public.David Wessel