It also extends the stimulus-boosted child tax credit and the college tuition credit for five years, individual and business tax breaks for two years, and the Medicare "doc fix" for one year, preventing a 27percentt payment cut for physicians.
Unemployment compensation was wisely extended in the stimulus bill, to a maximum of 53 weeks.
First, Mr Obama will be (rightly) reluctant to raise taxes, and tempted to extend parts of the stimulus package if unemployment is not dropping by 2010.
Last week, Roger Altman, the Wall Street executive and Democratic economic policy adviser, proposed several steps: Defer any deficit reduction until 2013 and extend some of the stimulus measures enacted in December, including a payroll-tax reduction for employees, more liberal capital expenditure write-offs for business and extended emergency jobless benefits.
As they do, both Congress and the White House confront conflicting pressures from voters and markets to take steps that will reduce deficits in the long run but add to them in the short run, by extending the existing stimulus spending and tax cuts, to prop up the economy so it does not fall back into a recession.
The period in which Cobra benefits can be requested was extended, however, and the stimulus bill eases the cost burden.
"Ms. Yellen's intellectual roots and leadership style both suggest that she would push somewhat more forcefully than Mr. Bernanke to extend the Fed's stimulus campaign, according to a careful review of her career and interviews with more than two dozen colleagues and acquaintances".
Congress and the Obama administration must extend certain components of the stimulus package until employment does revive, including unemployment benefits, food stamps, tax breaks for working families with children and fiscal aid to states.
Our results, therefore, not only extend the class of stimuli that are known to lead to a unity effect, but also suggest the hypothesis that synesthetic associations might also be "special" (or rather that audiovisual speech stimuli may not be so special, or unique, after all).
Congress should start by extending unemployment benefits in the stimulus package.
