Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010 | 5:11 p.m.
It’s the one-year anniversary of the signing of the federal stimulus package, and everyone is trying to score off it.
WASHINGTON — President Obama defended his year-old economic recovery package on Wednesday, arguing that the package, the major legislative achievement of his presidency so far, has created or saved as many as 2 million new jobs, lowered taxes for 95 percent of Americans and spared the country a potentially disastrous depression.
Here’s a rebuttal from our own Rep. Dean Heller, the Republican from up north:
“Despite claims that the stimulus bill would provide an ‘immediate jolt’ to our economy and unemployment would not rise above eight percent, millions of jobs have been lost and many Nevadans have lost their homes. Big government and massive debt is impeding economic recovery.”
Who’s right?
The New York Times’ economics columnist David Leonhardt weighs in and sides with Obama.
In politics, though, it doesn’t matter who’s right. Democrats have already done a terrible job selling it, and they will take a drubbing this fall if Americans don’t start to feel more economically secure.
On the home front, the news is bad and getting worse. Gov. Jim Gibbons has called a special session to close a $881 million budget hole. The upshot: 10 percent cuts to schools and universities and most other agencies, more furloughs, layoffs and service cuts. The only surprise of the Gibbons plan: Reducing the mining industry’s tax deductions, which they call a tax increase.
Our take:
Carson City — Imagine a game in which there are no winners. Scrabble without vowels. All chutes, no ladders.
That is the situation as the Nevada Legislature meets next week for a special session, made official Tuesday by Gov. Jim Gibbons’ proclamation, to close a $881 million budget hole.
Republicans and Democrats know they will be forced to turn their backs on favored policies and favored friends.
Later on, a bit more on a poll commissioned by the teachers’ union, first flashed by Sun columnist Jon Ralston.
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