Examining the stimulus package

The NYT, WSJ, and Paul Krugman take a look at the emerging details surrounding President-elect Obama's stimulus package, particularly the roughly $300 billion in proposed tax cuts.

Overall, the package will cover a two-year period with a price-tag of $675 billion to $775 billion, $270 billion to $310 billion of which would be spent on tax cuts. The balance -- $405 billion to $465 billion -- would be spent on infrastracture, health care, and other programs.

One thing to keep in mind is that in early 2008 Congress passed a $131 billion tax cut stimulus plan covering one year. Therefore, while $300 billion over two years might seem like a lot, it's actually the same level of spending as we saw in 2008.

The problem, of course, was that the 2008 tax cut stimulus didn't do much, if any, good.

Since the tax cut portion of the stimulus will more or less be a continuation of the 2008 tax cut stimulus, the real change from 2008 will be the $405 to $465 billion in spending on infrastructure, health care, and other projects.

On an annual basis, this is about $203 to $233 billion dollars in actual stimulus spending.

In 2007, the U.S. GDP was roughly $13.8 trillion, so that means the "new" part of the stimulus package will be about 1.5% of GDP.