From one perspective, it’s unfortunate that the House leadership couldn’t persuade any members of the opposition to vote for the recovery package. From another perspective, this is as it should be. The country faces serious issues, and it would do enormous real harm to real people to further water down the bill in pursuit of excess votes.
Meanwhile, though the bill is disappointing in some respects it’s very good news. CAP’s Michael Ettlinger explains that with this bill passed we can now see light at the end of the tunnel of the economic crisis and Daniel J. Weiss and Alexandra Kougentakis take a look at the exciting clean energy provisions of the package. Next, we’re going to need to try to clean up the financial system and start thinking about how the regular budget process can plug some of the holes in the recovery package.