There's no chance that anyone on this forum or any other is going to be able to come up with the logic on which the final stimulus plan -- or no plan, but little chance of that -- gets constructed. What none of us can build into the legislation that will be voted on are...

• The elements that will stimulate the economy the fastest, as developed by some very smart economists -- far smarter than me or probably anyone else posting on TOTV.
• Obama's campaign promises, to the extent they are consistent with economic stimulus.
• And the different idealogy and philosophy introduced by the GOP in the drafting process.

Trying to anticipate and project just those three simple elements into a plan seems impossible to me. I just hope that, if the bill gets too far off the track of what will work, that the President will simply threaten a veto and tell the Congress to go back to the drawing board to make the corrections he and his economic team think are important.

Having said that, I think the disagreements in the Congress will somehow be ironed out and an acceptable bill passed by mid-February. That by itself will be a huge and very encouraging change in the way the Congress does business.

By the way, I can't totally embrace Limbaugh's plan. I will complement him for at least coming up with a plan, as opposed to just continuing his right-wing rants. His numbers are a little bit off, but not by much. Among other things, I can't agree with his "split" based on the popular vote. Obama's six-point margin is a huge plurality and his ideas should get a higher weight based on the broad sweep of his victory. Besides, George Bush didn't even win the popular vote and he gave little to his political opponents little other than the figurative back of his hand during the six years when the GOP controlled both the White House and the Congress. In the interest of gaining an even broader consensus, President Obama has already given the GOP far more input into the legislative process than Bush ever gave the Democrats at any time during his administration. That by itself is not a good reason to reject Limbaugh's proposal, that would be just a continuation of political "getting even", but it is a statement of fact. Maybe the best reason why the allocation of that much public money to tax reductions is a bad idea is that such tax reductions have not worked recently. The economists -- both conservative and liberal -- who have been involved in drafting the stimulus legislation all agree that in these economic conditions, it is far more likely that the public will either pay down debt or increase savings with tax reductions, not spend it to begin the desired "increased demand-production-increased employment-increased GDP-increased tax revenues" economic cycle. They have all said that designation of stimulus monies to projects that will require actual spending are a more certain way to reverse the economic slide and begin to grow economic activity. The idea of directing more tax savings into the hands of corporations also doesn't work as well in these economic conditions as it did when used to "tweak" the performance of an otherwise strong economy. The corporations are "upstream" of the consumer and by themselves can't produce the necessary increases in consumer spending to stimulate the economy. There's a proper time for corporate tax benefits, but it's not right now.