The $830 billion “American Recovery and reinvestment act” — or the infamous stimulus — had three main parts: tax cuts and higher benefits such as food stamps for individuals, aid to state and local governments, and infrastructure investment.

But Wallace was wrong. First, the 2009 stimulus didn't cause the country's slow growth. Second, Trump, not Clinton, has proposed a historic stimulus, much bigger than the 2009 law.

In the final presidential debate last week, moderator Chris Wallace told Hillary Clinton that her economic plan is "similar to the Obama stimulus plan in 2009, which has led to the slowest GDP growth since 1949." Donald Trump interjected, telling Wallace that he was "correct."

Washington borrowed money to pay for the package. Since the goal of a stimulus is to get more money into the hands of Americans during a recession, there's no point in doing it if the government pays for it right away via tax hikes or spending cuts. This borrowing, though, helped create the Tea Party, as conservatives became frightened of the growth in the national debt.


Yes, the economy has grown slowly since 2009. President Obama walked into a blunder in early 2009 when he pledged that the stimulus would keep the unemployment rate below eight percent. The unemployment rate peaked at 10 percent that October.

But Mitt Romney didn't succeed in using this mistake against Obama in 2012. Americans intuited that the 2008 crisis had been so catastrophic as to defy the president's prediction.

The nature of the crash worked against a robust recovery. The economy crashed because Americans, over a 30-year period, had increased their private-sector debt to unsustainable levels, from less than 50 percent of GDP in 1980 to nearly 100 percent on the eve of the crash.

This debt allowed Americans to increase spending even as wages fell behind. By 2008, they had borrowed so much they couldn't borrow or spend anymore. As they spent less, the people who depended on that spending, from construction workers to waiters, lost their jobs.

This may sound like ancient history. But it's important for Republicans to absorb the lesson. They lose credibility when they continue to blame Obama for a slow recovery — and their lost credibility on the economy led to Trump.


What about today?

Both presidential candidates offer tax cuts. But only one candidate's tax-cut plan is traditional stimulus, in that it would require the federal government to borrow more money: Trump's. Clinton, on the other hand, would pay for her tax cuts by raising other taxes, the independent Tax Foundation has determined. She noted in the debate that "what I have put forward doesn't add a penny to the debt."

Just because Trump's plan is "stimulus" and Clinton's isn't doesn't mean that Clinton's tax package is superior. When global interest rates are near zero percent, as they are now, and growth is slow, as it is, it makes sense to borrow for tax cuts.

It doesn't make sense, though, to borrow to cut taxes to the degree that Trump proposes. He would cut tax revenues by up to $600 billion a year, eight times what the 2009 stimulus did. That's as growing costs for Social Security, Medicare, and defense push spending up. This move should scare global investors.

On spending, too, only Trump offers stimulus, in the form of infrastructure investment.

Clinton herself would nearly double existing federal infrastructure spending, adding $275 billion to the $305 billion Obama and Congress are currently spending over five years. She'd pay for it through higher business taxes. Trump says he would "double" Clinton's added spending, and has no proposal to pay for it.


This extra $550 billion over five years would go far beyond the 2009 stimulus. That program devoted only $50 billion to traditional infrastructure over roughly four years — and for a sound reason.

Trump, then, would take the most difficult part of the 2009 stimulus and increase it by tenfold, all borrowed.

That may sound like a boon to the people who are worried about the condition of our bridges and transit systems. But it's hard to spend infrastructure money quickly and wisely, whereas it's easy to give people a tax cut. That's why the 2009 stimulus skimped on infrastructure.

Building too much at the same time — exactly what Trump is proposing, but on a scale we haven't seen before — drives up demand for workers and materials, increasing prices and driving down quality.

Contractors on a New York state project, an ongoing venture to bring the Long Island Rail Road to Manhattan's East Side, took longer than expected to build a key tunnel because the best workers were busy on other projects, such as the city's third water tunnel.

Union work rules and benefits packages, too, add to schedules and costs. Unions would be even less willing than they already are to offer cost-saving concessions on projects when they know that the federal government has swooped in with half a trillion dollars in extra funds.

Stimulus is complicated — sometimes it's a good idea and sometimes it isn't. What's not complicated, though, is who has proposed a massive stimulus package in this campaign, and who hasn't.


Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.