The article “Trade-Offs in the Stimulus Package” was posted on the Congressional Quarterly Politics website on February 4th, 2009. CQ Politics is a free website published by Congressional Quarterly, an independent media organization covering Congress. The author of the article is Madison Powers, a CQ guest columnist, whose column appears weekly on CQ Politics. He is Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. He has co-authored two books, as well as written a host of articles on ethical issues in journals and books.
The article is directed at people who are interested in finding ways to solve the economic crisis. This includes politicians on either side of the political spectrum, as well as business leaders, academic professionals and interested citizens. It was written to convince the readers that a diversified approach to solving the current crisis is most appropriate. The author’s main point is that a paradigm shift is needed to solve problems. He argues that efficiency in maximizing economic activity and fair and equitable policies are not mutually exclusive. Both can be achieved if our focus shifts from a narrow set of solutions of primarily big-scale infrastructure investments and tax cuts to a multifaceted approach focusing on many smaller, equity oriented programs. Powers believes that the multiplier effect for these smaller projects can be bigger than the effect the sole reliance on tax cuts and infrastructure programs would have.
