This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, March 1st, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown.

As President Obama gears up to battle for re-election,

it's worth re-evaluating the money that is still being spent in this so-called stimulus bill.

Hundreds of billions of dollars aimed at alleviating a steep recession.

Garrett Jones is BB&T professor for the study of capitalism at the Mercatus Center and

a professor of economics at George Mason University. We spoke yesterday.

The New York Times headline reads a little like perhaps an Obama campaign press release at least it echoes the sentiment of President

Obama pretty much since the very beginning of talk about the stimulus in late 2008,

early 2009. The headline is

stimulus is maligned, but options were few.

And it goes back through some of the arguments about the

stimulus that occurred in 2008, 2009 and arguments that continue today?

Sure, I mean as a matter of politics it may be true that their options were few, right?

Any politician coming into the power in the middle of a crisis feels like they have to do

something right so whether you're in the American left or the American right probably somebody

was going to put out some kind of bill it would have been big no matter what but as a matter of economics the question is what what did the

stimulus really cost us and there I think we can say that people are economists are a bit more

skeptical of the power of government

spending to stimulate the economy than we were a couple years ago. I can't say

most of the profession agrees with me but I think we've shaded down our estimates and

here's one reason this is built on some work I did at the Mercata Center

...