With regards to the stimulus plan, I think the vast majority of it is useless as stimulus to the economy.
What stimulates the economy is an environment that encourages expansion, a stability in the tax & regulatory environment that allows for long range planning, and low cost of taxes. This bill fails in this.
Now, to be fair, there are a few things in the bill that are good and I think will help. There are tax cuts that lower the cost of doing business and they fixed (albeit temporarily) the AMT issue that would have impacted just about everyone making over $30k. Those are good things that help create an environment for economic growth and we should have more of it with drastic cuts in government spending and an end to base line budgeting. But this is greatly outweighed by the garbage in the bill.
First off, there are the types of spending that will not produce jobs. $50 million for the Endowment for the Arts for example. A lot of transfer payments like block grants and increased unemployment and medicare spending. This does little more than rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Then there are temporary projects. All the road construction, building renovation, and research projects. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth. While this will create jobs for those immediate projects, what happens when the road is complete or the research money runs out? Those jobs go away as well unless you start a new project, meaning a continued and ongoing expenditure. While developing a solid infrastructure is good and what government should be doing, I would not count on it as a means of saving or creating more than temporary jobs.
And of course there are the provisions that have no business being in a "stimulus" bill and whose sole purpose is to drive a political agenda. For example, the provision requiring all medical records to be loaded onto a federal database. This is supposedly to make healthcare cheaper. Considering how often "private" government records of political opponents get accessed, the only real reason for this is to push nationalized medicine and fight anyone who opposes it. Case in point, look what happened to Joe the Plumber and the government employees who got disciplined for accessing his records. Do you really want your political opponents knowing everything in your medical history?
Finally, there is the political paybacks. $3 billion to ACORN and similar community organizers, even though they are under investigation for voter fraud.
With regard to Welfare to Work, the whole plan of giving refundable tax credits is essentially welfare. You cannot cut taxes for people who do not pay taxes in the first place. I know they are broaching it as a rebate of social security taxes, but since the Social Security system is already insolvent, what is this going to do to that program? It will only mean higher taxes in the future. And it will amount to about $8 a week. I remember how much the democrats and the media castigated Bush for his $500 tax rebate idea and scoffed at it because it was too small. Wonder if they will be intellectually honest.
My last point is the manner in which the bill was passed. There was no input allowed from House republicans. It was rammed through without any amendments allowed from republicans. It was passed before anyone, and I mean ANYONE, including the bills supporters, read it. Then it was signed into law without the promised 5 days of public review and comment. Since Obama ran on a platform of openness and pushed specifically the 5 day waiting period, I think it is quite reasonable to hold him accountable for it.