But the consensus is that it did help and that, along with the aggressive monetary stimulus by the Federal Reserve, the ARRA helped pull forward the economic expansion that began in 2009 and is now in its 10th year.

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What is ARRA’s relevance today?

While I don’t think a recession is imminent, a couple of reports from last week threw some shade on the U.S. economy: Both retail sales and industrial production were surprisingly downbeat. Both are noisy, monthly series, and such blips shouldn’t be overweighted, especially given their inconsistency with the almighty, ever-acquisitive American consumer, bolstered by robust job growth, low unemployment and even, as of late, decent real wage gains. But there’s a recession out there somewhere, and we’re not ready for it.

One reason we’re ill-prepared is our elevated public debt levels. We will very likely enter the next downturn with a debt-to-GDP ratio that’s over 80 percent, a whopping 40 percentage points higher than usual. That doesn’t mean there won’t be fiscal space to offset the downturn. Such spending is temporary and, if anything, improves our fiscal outlook by hastening the recovery, as did the ARRA. But fiscal history is quite clear that entering downturns with historically high debt levels leads to a weaker fiscal response and, in turn, a weaker recovery.

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By the way, if you’re a member of the “deficits-don’t-matter” club, please reread the above. Again, the problem isn’t the lack of actual fiscal space. It’s the lack of perceived fiscal space.

Then there’s the politics. When the ARRA passed, Democrats held majorities in both chambers, and three Senate Republicans broke ranks and supported the bill. The idea that this president and Congress would act that quickly and harmoniously seems like a faraway dream.

Is there anything we can do to incorporate lessons from the ARRA into today’s much more fractious politics? I’ve got three suggestions, which I’ll present in order of plausibility.

First, though it hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, there’s a steep fiscal cliff coming later this year with the return of previously legislated spending caps and “sequestration” cuts, leading to potentially deep cuts in the discretionary side of the federal budget. As I read the numbers, these cuts have the potential to shave half a point off real GDP growth toward the end of this year and into next year.

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Congress has consistently agreed to ignore the caps, and while I’ve been critical of rising deficits in a heretofore strong economy, based on the concerns noted above, this would be a bad time for fiscal tightening. I admit to sounding like the fiscal version of St. Augustine: “Give me fiscal rectitude … but not quite yet.” But as I’ve written on this page, there’s good debt and bad debt. And to avoid a hard hit to a potentially vulnerable economy, Congress should avoid this cliff (I’ll soon have something to say on smart versus dumb ways to spend these allocations). Even given peak dysfunction, I’d give better than even odds that they will do so.

Next, depending on its depth, we’ll need the Federal Reserve to act as aggressively as the last time to fight the next downturn. Note, however, that the central bank will be entering the next recession with less firepower, as their primary weapon — lowering the benchmark interest rate they control — will have less room to fall. That rate was 5 percent going into the last downturn and will likely be between 2-percent to 3 percent this time.

That monetary constraint implies an elevated role for a robust fiscal response, but the best thing Congress could do in that regard is also the least likely: Strengthen and expand the programs that automatically switch on in recessions. We can muddle through with gridlock and dysfunction in strong economies, but we cannot do so in recessions. It’s extremely hard to imagine this Congress passing a ARRA-like stimulus in less than a month. Thus, a forward-looking agenda would depend less on discretionary measures and more on extended unemployment insurance and SNAP benefits, job subsidies and grants to states (which must balance their budgets regardless of the economy), all of which were part of ARRA.