The NY Times:

Senate Democrats reached an agreement with Republican moderates on Friday to pare a huge economic recovery measure, clearing the way for approval of a package that President Obama said was urgently needed in light of mounting job losses.

...

The fine print was not immediately available, and the numbers were shifting. But in essence, the Democratic leadership and two centrist Republicans announced they had struck a deal on about $110 billion in cuts to the roughly $900 billion legislation — a deal expected to provide at least the 60 votes needed to send the bill out of the Senate and into negotiations with the House, which has passed its own version.

And whatever disappointment I initially felt at the cuts (not even knowing what they were, just knowing the amount was too small) was mediated somewhat by this:

Republicans were clearly irritated at the outcome and faulted those involved in working out the bargain. “When you say this was the best we could do, I disagree with you,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on the floor. “This not remotely close to what we could have done if we had sat down in a true bipartisan fashion and found a better way.”

Lindsey Graham is pissed? That's definitely good news.

"Let's not make the perfect the enemy of the essential," Obama said earlier this week, aware, as I'm sure he has since before he took ofice, that the stimuluar package would fall short of his expectations — and far short of those hungry to see the nation turn immediately from the policies of the past eight years (and more). What the Senate is going to pass is indeed far short of perfect; many will argue it does not even achieve the essential threshold. This is true only if the goal is to fix the economy in one single act. That was never going to happen.

Had the Congress been able to pass even the most ambitious recovery package, it would not have been enough. Even Paul Krugman's call for a $2 trillion effort would have been insufficient, for the very simple and very real reason that the world is going to change, circumstances will shift, and what we do today will not be the right thing for tomorrow. In this light, a less ambitious program that provides a serious and significant jumpstart to the economy may turn out to be the best one to put forward.

I was never comfortable inserting things like support for the arts into this package. I am in favor of the government spending billions on art; hell, I'd love to have a stipend to write poetry and creative lit. We are robbing ourselves in so many ways by not funding the arts. And, yes, arts can provide economic support, but in this climate, and with this crisis, they need to be brought forward another day, in another way. This is for hardcore labor efforts: infrastructure, schools, green tech, etc. I think the more "shovel-ready" stimulus package programs are, the more effective they'll be — not a very original comment, I know — but also the more easily they'll garner support from the American people.

And more importantly, the more difficult it will be for the wingnuts to argue against them. If we spend billions to build roads, fix bridges, pay teachers, develop new industuries, what the hell will these fuckers be able to grouses about on Fox News? That we provided jobs? Increased productivity? Saved homes? This package has to be as free of red meat for the red bloviates as possible. This needs to be as basic rock-solid all-American as it can be so that Pres Obama and Congressional Dems can wave the flag and declare proudly what they have done for the American people.

After which they can return to a rather more quiet DC and start funding the arts.

A humongous stimulus package would have felt good, but it would also have set in stone too much for the future. If the Congress had, for example, passed a $2 trillion dollar package and some monumental, unforeseen change had occurred, would they be able to respond to that? While they will have to fight to provide additional monies for what was not funded this go-round, they have a fair amount of freedom to respond to circumstances down the road. And if all they need do is fund more of the same, well, they can damn sure do that again now that they've done it once. Especially as we begin to see initial positive results.

We will see at least one more stimulus package this year, I'm sure. This one is insufficient, and Pres Obama will find a way to bring forward what is missing. Some things that were removed — I'm thinking in particular of family planning funding — will absolutely be restored, and the Rs in the Senate will not be able to stop it. Too many people are looking far too short-term. That's never been a charge to level at Barack Obama. His view is always long-term, big picture. He can accept an imperfect stimulus package because, one, he knows even an insufficient one will get the recovery started; and two, he always planned to use his full eight years in office to accomplish his goals. He may sign his last, most vital bill right before he goes to join his successor take office in 2017, but he will not panic that in the first month of his first term, he didn't get the whole enchilada.

It would be wise for others on the left to heed his example.