EXPERTS CONCLUDE: LIMBAUGH PLAN BETTER THAN OBAMA'S STIMULUS

In 2009, at the height of debate about President Barack Obama's stimulus plan, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh proposed a compromise in the pages of the Wall Street Journal that would have devoted half the stimulus to tax cuts. Now, a new working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) concludes that Limbaugh was right, at least in terms of that portion of the stimulus that was directed to state governments.

The paper, by Gerald Carlino and Robert P. Inman, finds that "ARRA [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] assistance would have been 30 percent more effective in stimulating GDP growth had the share spent on government purchases and project aid been fully allocated to private sector tax relief and to matching aid to states for lower-income support." In other words: tax cuts and cash transfers would have been better.
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