But with the exception of some pieces of the bill -- like the Jumpstart Our Small Businesses Act and a February 2012 extension of existing payroll tax cuts -- Congress won't pass it. There's simply no appetite for a major federal spending push -- voters have soured on stimulus, because the $787 billion 2009 package didn't live up to initial expectations; voters and lawmakers from both parties are concerned about deficits; the Republican House refuses to pass spending increases without offsetting cuts, which would defeat the purpose of pumping money into the economy to stimulate demand. (Based on the administration's assumptions, the CBO estimated the Obama plan would essentially have a neutral impact on the federal budget.) Even if Obama wins reelection and Democrats hold the Senate in November, they're unlikely to retake the House, and it's hard to see a major stimulus package advancing in the near future.

But what about Romney? He's also been accused of having no plan, including by the agenda-setting conservative editorial board of The Wall Street Journal. That's just as false as the claim that Obama doesn't have one. Romney does have a plan -- 59 points worth, in fact. But while Romney bashes the president for not creating jobs fast enough, and has barnstormed the country with the slogan "putting jobs first," the fact is that his agenda isn't about jobs first. It's primarily about improving the business climate, with the expectation that jobs will follow. And it's essentially impossible to assess the job-creating impact of the plan, because -- with a few notable exceptions below -- the campaign has studiously avoided estimating how many jobs each component would produce.

When I spoke with Romney domestic policy director Oren Cass recently, he said that was exactly the point. "What the president sees as his role is to identify specific jobs he wants to create, and then go out and try to create them," Cass said. "That's essentially the approach he's taken, and we're seeing exactly how well that works in practice. Governor Romney's approach is focused on creating an environment in which job creation occurs."

The plan is textbook trickle-down economics. Romney seeks to treat the underlying illness, a stagnant economy, in order to eventually get rid of the symptom -- a rational approach, if you believe in trickle-down theory, but one that means the pain of high unemployment may hang around for some time.

Romney's plan hinges heavily on reforming both the corporate and individual tax code and removing regulations, including the Dodd-Frank financial reform law (you can read a distilled version of Romney's whole plan here). It also calls for deficit reduction, although independent analysts, such at the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, have estimated it would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit.