This morning all of our smartphones and email inboxes were filled with alerts from the papers — the economy is growing and the recession really seems to be over. Of course it “officially” ended six months ago but we long ago lost any belief in economists or their data. But note what the stories this morning said — consumer spending led the charge. Look at the Wall Street Journal’s lead graph:

The U.S. economy’s expansion slowed at the start of 2010, but the rise in consumer spending which drove it bodes well for the future.

If consumers are spending more they are by definition feeling better about the economy and that generally translates into feeling better about the current people in power. Not always, but generally and that bodes well for the Dems. Not that you’d know it from the news. While we can fully expect Maddow and Olbermann to point this out it’s unlikely we’ll be hearing anything from Fox or CNN any time soon about this because it doesn’t fit their narrative.

The political spin cycle now runs 24/7 and the cable nets have become video versions of the blogosphere — fast, furious and fundamentally useless as sources of journalism. Unless by journalism you mean the minute-by-minute chronicling of the rumor mill. So the storyline for now is set — the Democrats are headed for disaster in November, Obama is on a roll (until he isn’t), the Republicans are having an existential crisis and the Tea Party brigade holds all the cards. Nice story if any of it held water. Like much of what passes for news on these “news” networks, this story has shreds of truth that have been repurposed to build a simplistic, almost fictional, tale of political intrigue. The problem is people actually believe it’s based on reporting and facts, when it’s pretty clear it is not.

For junkies it’s fun to get caught up in the daily drama but let’s see what all these polls say in September. If the jobs picture is improving then as the GDP is now (and jobs are almost always a lagging indicator of economic conditions), history indicates that Democrats will probably lose seats in Congress, but not control over either or both chambers. So instead of watching the blowhards on cable, check in each month with the jobs report. It’ll tell you way more about what November holds than the ferocity of the Tea Baggers.

Amtrak Acela Train

Amidst the more than half a billion Federal dollars to be spent as stimulus (and another $287 million in tax breaks), there is great news for Amtrak but maybe not so great news for the people who ride it most — those in the Northeast Corridor.

The final stimulus bill will give Amtrak $850 million for capital projects — tracks, trains, stations — with an emphasis on projects that can be started quickly thereby putting people to work. But there’s one final proviso: No more than 50% can be spent on projects in the Northeast Corridor.

That’s nuts!

Putting aside the lines Amtrak is paid to run by states (such as the commuter lines in California), nearly three-quarters of Amtrak’s paying riders use the Northeast Corridor (72%) while those trains cost less than 30% of Amtrak’s budget to operate. Put another way, the biggest share of Amtrak’s spending goes to routes that carry just 28% of the railroad’s passengers.

In fact long-distance lines lost $668 million dollars last year while the Northeast Corridor made Amtrak $94 million in profit. Imagine what would happen to ridership and revenue if Amtrak was able to actually invest money to improve the Northeast Corridor. But no. Not any time soon.

Instead of investing that $850 million where it’s really needed and where projects await (high-speed electrification, bridge rehabs, track improvements, etc), Amtrak is being forced to spend perhaps half of those funds on lines that lose money and have relatively little traffic.

Take the Sunset Limited (no one else is). A storied train that last year carried just 71,000 passengers. It’s just dumb. If Congress wants Amtrak to run long-distance money-losing routes it should fund them separately as some sort of “Rail-Buff Gift Act”.

Instead for years while some Republicans have said Amtrak should be broken up, Congress always ends up giving the railroad  just enough to keep going and just enough to run ruinously expensive cross-country trains through Congressional districts in states where rail travel is a quaint notion — not a realistic possibility.

So, thanks Congress for actually giving Amtrak at least a little of what it needs to run the railroad. But next time, put the money where it’s needed and where it will serve as an investment for future growth. Not on a line for tourists on a nostalgia binge.

Capitol Hill

Facts? Who needs facts when you can have Republicans and Democrats trading misleading charges about the stimulus plan? Republicans say the $825 billion plan is just a vast waste of money, filled with non-essential items that Democrats want to push through under the over of “crisis.” They add it will take way too long to effect the economy.

Democrats have a different take, defending every dollar as critical to the recovery. House leaders defended money for contraceptives as necessary to help states (45 of which are now running budget gaps) offset the cost of family planning services in these desperate times.

Now we have some real analysis by some real non-partisan numbers crunchers and it’s pretty enlightening. Remember late last week when it seemed like every cable news anchor repeatedly quoted a Congressional Budget Office study showing that only 38% of the money would actually be spent by September of 2010? Horrors! Proof the bubbly ones said that the Republicans “had a point.” Well, they didn’t.

That CBO “study” was not a study — it was a brief look at a portion of the stimulus package. Now the CBO has done a study on the whole enchilada and — quelle surprise — far more of the money gets spent upfront than Republicans were claiming. The full analysis shows that almost two-thirds of the money (64%) would be spent by Sep 2010 and therefore circulating in the economy.

In other words it’s pretty “stimulating” according to David Leonhardt writing in today’s NY Times. But it still falls short of Obama’s pledge to get 75% of the money out there fast. Keep in mind Federal “spending” in this case includes actual spending and tax cuts since they cost the government revenue.

Then there’s the report card put together by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center which grades the ten major tax cut components of the stimulus package as it appeared over the weekend (note: the package will change slightly as the Senate and House hammer out a compromise over their respective versions). The TPC looked at how much “bang for the buck” each dollar of Federal tax reduction will have on the economy in the short-term (which they unhelpfully fail to fully define although they seem to consider it the 2009-2010 timeframe).

Of the ten, only four get B+ or B grades and three of them are the ones Democrats have most vociferously championed. Those include the payroll tax reduction and an increase in the earned income tax credit — both of which would quickly put relatively small amounts of cash in the pockets of the working poor who are most likely to immediately spend it and thereby stimulate the economy.

The other 6 gets C’s or D’s including one of Obama’s pet projects (investment credits for renewable energy) and several business tax credits Republicans have loudly favored.

But getting back to the original argument here — does this package actually move money into the economy quickly? — the TPC report confirms the CBO’s findings showing that the tax cut portions do. The TPC’s four top-graded tax cuts will put $173 billion into the economy quickly while the six lowest-graded will provide just $42 billion in economic benefit over the longer term.

So while there’s plenty of room to debate what’s actually in the package — only $9 billion for mass transit? — the faux debate over whether it will work and work quickly has been settled. Let’s see if the cable newsies catch on.