While looking at the Economic Report of the President, I was inspired to make this chart, which actually doesn’t come from the ERP (more ERP blogging in a day or two). It shows the contribution of the ARRA, aka the Obama stimulus, to the deficit — a rough measure of the amount of stimulus — with the CBO’s projection of the unemployment rate, by fiscal year:

Congressional Budget Office

Basically, the stimulus fades out fast starting in fiscal 2011, which starts in October 2010. Yet the consensus view is that unemployment will be around as high as it is now.

The point is that we’re doing a 1937 — or actually worse, since unemployment had in fact fallen dramatically before FDR made his big mistake. Fiscal support for the economy will be pulled away with the economy having barely begun to recover.