March 13, 2009 07:42 PM UTC

"Second Stimulus" Backpedal Complete

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• by: Colorado Pols

Concluding yesterday’s discussion of certain extremely ill-timed statements by certain Democratic congressional leaders, indicating they were “starting work” on a second stimulus package:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said a second U.S. economic stimulus plan isn’t “in the cards” for now and that she would first like to see the $787-billion package signed into law by President Barack Obama “play out.”

“I really would like to focus on the first one,” Pelosi, a California Democrat, told reporters yesterday at her weekly news conference in Washington. [Pols emphasis]

Earlier this week, Pelosi said she was keeping the “door open” to another massive spending bill to jump-start the economy.

House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey said Wednesday that “prudence would dictate” that his committee “begin to prepare possible options” for a second stimulus plan…

“It’s just not something right now that is in the cards,” she said. She added that a highway funding bill that Congress will consider later this year is one of several measures that may boost the economy. She said she also is confident the just-passed stimulus will work.

The Obama administration, as you can imagine, was none too pleased by this little foray off the reservation:

[White House economic adviser Christina] Romer, a well-known expert on the Great Depression, also said it was too early to tell if another government stimulus package was needed to give a needed jolt to the economy.  “We absolutely need to let this one work,” she said.

Which means, first and foremost, not giving Republicans a mile-wide opening to assert it’s not working even though there’s no way to know that yet–which is exactly what Pelosi and Obey did. Needless to say, we stand by everything we said about this yesterday: and for the sake of swing district Democrats (like ours in Colorado), who need to keep this issue framed properly against a determined GOP whose single-minded goal is to undermine the stimulus with the public, we sincerely hope Pelosi and Obey think through their future public statements.