I think I do a pretty good job of keeping politics out of my posts here at Personal Finance Analyst.  Occasionally, I slip a bit and provide some clues regarding my personal outlook, but I really do try to keep my posts out of the nasty and generally ineffectual back-and-forths that too often pass for blog-based political debate.

I’m going to try to maintain that with this post, although the subject matter makes it tough to remain “above the fray” or non-partisan.

Here’s the deal.  President Obama and a Democratically-controlled Congress ran, at least in part, on the idea that it was time to pump some bucks into the economy in hopes of staving off a deeper and nastier recession.  Since his election, Presiden Obama has signed into law provisions creating more spending than anyone can truly comprehend as means of turning the economy around.

The economy isn’t turning around.  The stimulus doesn’t appear to be stimulating.  After reading a recent Associated Press article about the White House’s approach to the not-so-stimulating stimulus, I thought people might be interested in trying to figure out why it isn’t doing the trick.

Instead of giving you my personal take on why this is happening, I thought it might be nice to share a few possibilities.

It needs more time. Only a fraction of the money planned for stimulus spending has been pumped into the economy at this point and some supporters of the stimulus package will tell you that it will start working once the circulation of the cash begins to grow.  More of that money is supposed to be in action this summer, so if you take this position, you’re probably expecting progress soon.

It could be worse. You don’t hear this a lot, but I think that it might be fairly persuasive.  It’s possible that the stimulus hasn’t pulled us out of recession but that things would be a heckuva lot worse if we hadn’t done anything at all.  The President sort of hinted at that when he recently stated:

“Now, I know that there’s some who, despite all evidence to the contrary, still don’t believe in the necessity and promise of this recovery act.”

“And I would suggest to them that they talk to the companies who, because of this plan, scrapped the idea of laying off employees and, in fact, decided to hire employees. Tell that to the Americans who received that unexpected call saying, ‘Come back to work.’”

Rose-colored glasses have limited the stimulation. This seems to be a developing theme among those who are speaking on behalf of the stimulus package and the White House.  Basically, they’re telling us that the original plan was created based on estimates that were later shown to be a little too optimistic.  That’s why we’re not back down to 8% unemployment and it’s why the economic graphs aren’t yet showing an up-tick.  The apparent solution to this error in estimation would be a little patience and/or more stimulus spending.

It’s not going to work.  Period. While the other explanations assume that the core thinking behind the stimulus package is sound, maniy will argue that it was doomed from square one and that the programs and spending aren’t going to do solve any economic problems but will instead exacerbate them.  As you’d probably expect, most of these arguments seem to be coming from free marketeers and the loyal GOP opposition.  The fact that they’re biased doesn’t mean they’re not potentially right (that holds true for the previously mentioned takes, too).

So, if you’re trying to figure out why you’re wallet isn’t being stimulated and are questioning the whole shebang, you can take your pick from those explanations.  Regardless of which one(s) you choose, the fact of the matter is that things aren’t yet looking up.  Until they do, it behooves all of us to do our part to back the approaches we feel offer the greatest chance for success and to do our best to keep our own financial houses in order throughout this downturn.

I know I promised to try to keep my politics out of this, but I don’t want to be accused of surreptitiously spinning the issues here.  So, I’ll come right out with it.  While my vote is always in play, I vote with the Democrats more often than with the Republicans.  I voted for Barack Obama and would do so again against the same competition.  That being said, I am not convinced of the stimulus package’s wisdom and an unimpressed with the unwillingness of Americans to accept the temporary pain of market adjustments.  I’m hoping I’m wrong, though.  I’m hoping that we’ll start to see and feel that stimulus package kicking in soon.  Misplaced or not, I always hope for the best after something’s been done, even if it’s not what I would’ve done.

Keep your fingers crossed.