I don’t know if you’ve been following it, but the first signs that the in-coming Obama administration will be center-right in character have – on a policy level – emerged in the new administration’s plans for stimulus or recovery spending. Many people like me quietly (or loudly) worried that the cabinet & White House appointments were Clintonian in character. The appointments of Senator Clinton, Rep. Emmanuel and the rest worried me, but I’ve thought that – if the team were led in a progressive direction, having centrist Democrats on board could be handy.

However, Obama-inspired press leaks about the stimulus package have made clear than on a policy basis, the far right of the Republican party may be accommodated with useless tax cuts while the needs of the nation may be ignored. The New York Times and Washington Post carried the news a couple of days ago and its very bad.

Mr. Obama plans a $750 Billion stimulus, $300 Billion of that will be spent on tax cuts . The reason this is a ghastly idea, from the point of view of softening the nation’s deepening depression is that the $300 Billion is – in essence – money thrown away. The stimulus value of the proposed tax cuts is very, very small, as compared to other ways of spending the money.

This is very hard and I do not understand it much even after some fair amount of research. So if you feel your eyes glazing over, just skip over it. Economists I spoken to from left, right and center have more or less signed onto a measure of how different forms government spending affect growth in the economy. The most cited work is that of Mark Zandi, the Chief Economist of Moody’s Economy.com. The Economic Policy Institute uses Zandi’s model in its masterful (in my opinion) Rescue Plan For Main Street as does my personal guru Paul Krugman.

Do you want to read Jon Tasini on the tax cuts? Try Here. He thinks they are a bad idea, too. See also, the Drum Major Institute’s Amy Traub here Those who are fond of treading a middle ground ("hey diddle diddle, the radical middle" for you old-timers) might want to try Robb Borosage's half-defense of the tax cuts He points out that part of the tax cut is consistent with the Obama program of reducing burdens on the middle class -- a point which, in my view, avoids the subject. The stimulus needs to be really big if it is to confront the expected rise in unemployment. Adjust the tax burden on lower income Americans, yes! But not under the banner of recovery.

See also the links in the Wednesday's Krugman post which inlcudes a whithering critique of the $300 Billion tax cut from the Tax Policy Center's Howard Gleckman . Need more? One the size of the package needed try Katrina Vanden Heuvel's essay a few days ago in The Nation

Since, as it seems clear, that the tax cuts are bad policy, why does Mr. Obama propose them? Possibly, to recruit Congressional Republican support for the stimulus. But, as I & Nobelist, liberal Mr. Krugman sees it, this is a truly terrible idea since it sabotages the recovery and provides an opportunity for the right to attack the whole program in 2010.

This really does look like a plan that falls well short of what advocates of strong stimulus were hoping for — and it seems as if that was done in order to win Republican votes. Yet even if the plan gets the hoped-for 80 votes in the Senate, which seems doubtful, responsibility for the plan’s perceived failure, if it’s spun that way, will be placed on Democrats.

I see the following scenario: a weak stimulus plan, perhaps even weaker than what we’re talking about now, is crafted to win those extra GOP votes. The plan limits the rise in unemployment, but things are still pretty bad, with the rate peaking at something like 9 percent and coming down only slowly. And then Mitch McConnell says “See, government spending doesn’t work.”

The time to start pushing and shoving the Obama administration, it appears, has come before Day One has.