Another disappointing year; another stimulus proposal

In what appears to be an annual rit­ual, a pres­i­dent has pro­posed yet another stim­u­lus plan to rein­vig­o­rate eco­nomic growth and put Amer­i­cans back to work. This seem­ingly never-ending series of quick-fixes began in the final year of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion with tem­po­rary tax rebates (at $150+ bil­lion), fol­lowed by a huge fis­cal stim­u­lus pack­age in 2009 (with an approx­i­mate cost of $830 bil­lion), an end-of-the-year mea­sure in 2010 (with an esti­mated 10-year price tag of $850 bil­lion), and now the lat­est jobs pro­posal of 2011, which will set the nation back another $447 bil­lion. All told, these four efforts to pump life into an ail­ing econ­omy come in well north of $2 trillion.