Ever since it's passage (even before), conservative voices in Congress have complained about the $787 economic stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The nut of the complaints is that the Act does nothing for the economy or the American people while adding nearly a trillion dollars to the federal deficit. So effective, apparently, is this charge, that the word "stimulus" has become a dirty word. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke had to walk back his statement that a second stimulus was being "hotly discussed and very seriously considered" by some members of Congress and the Obama Administration.

This morning, the Bureau of Economic Analyses released the latest economic growth data. In the second quarter of this year, the gross domestic product (GDP) shrank at annul rate of 1.0 percent. While this represents a slowing of the free-fall rate of economic contraction we saw in Q1 (6.4 percent), the economy has quite a ways to go before job losses become gains and wages begin ticking upward. This improvement, though, does beg the question "Is the Recovery Act working?"

As usual, Stan Collender makes much sense.