They had the transition period of most of November, all of December and three weeks in January to plan and draft the package. So it must be one of the great political mysteries of our time that the economist stars of Team Obama outsourced the job to the Democrats in Congress.

The stimulus plan that emerged from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House, without a single Republican vote in support, is not impressive, whether judged by its ability to create jobs or to invest money widely for the economy of the future. It does not even do a competent job of providing a quick fix for a consumaholic system that finds itself suddenly starved of cash.

The Senate compromise, which is expected to pass this week, is not much better. The largest single item remains the extension of Medicaid, which will be helpful for the surging numbers of unemployed but will not create many new jobs. Those it does create will be in the already swollen health sector. This is now set to consume 17 percent of GDP while producing worse life expectancy and infant mortality figures than other countries enjoy while spending less than 10 percent of GDP.

Still, the Senate bill is useful. The Congressional Budget Office says that 64 percent of the money should be spent by the end of the 2010 fiscal year (which ends in 2011) and that the combination of tax cuts and new spending should create new jobs and stimulate new economic activity.

The cost remains very high indeed, coming as it does on top of the Bush administration's budget deficit of $1.2 trillion in its final fiscal year. The accumulated deficits make the Bush administration the most Keynesian government of all time, with unfunded stimulus after stimulus, whose main achievement was to feed the double bubble of housing and finance that got the world economy into this mess.

This year's GDP may decline below $14 trillion, while the Bush deficit takes debt above $12 trillion. Another year of debt, more interest payments and the stimulus package will all add up. It is now almost certain that President Obama's first term will see the government's debt become higher than the country's GDP, for the first time in U.S. peacetime history.

Despite the complexities of the legislation, the American public seems to have understood quite clearly that the bill is, on the whole, a useful measure, even though it clearly sees the bill's flaws. The latest national Diageo/Hotline Poll found 54 percent of registered voters supporting the package, even if it means increasing the federal deficit. Only 34 percent were opposed.

The same poll then went on to ask if the voters thought the package of spending and tax cuts would be spent and managed wisely. Only 14 percent said they were "very confident" it would. And only 12 percent said they were "very confident" the stimulus package would be effective in turning around the economy.

The American voter, on the basis of that poll, is smarter than most Washington observers think. The voter seems to have understood that the bill is as much about politics as the economy, being designed more to peel off sufficient Republican votes to ensure passage than to do the best for the economy.

A pure job-creation scheme would have pumped money into a nationwide program to retrofit houses and buildings for energy efficiency, or to repair existing roads, a process that employs more people than building new ones, or to expand the rail system.

A pure economic stimulus would have slashed taxes, albeit in the knowledge that the Bush administration's tax rebates last year had only limited effect, as most recipients chose to pay down debt rather than splurge.

A bill to fix the housing-foreclosure crisis would have given a one- or two-year tax relief on all monthly mortgage payments, not just that part of the payment that covers interest.

A bill to invest in the future would have made student loans interest-free, increased funding for science research and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (the latest Senate bill cuts them both), and made up all those parts of the individual state deficits that came from education.

The current bill is a flawed compromise, an attempt to placate different political constituencies that likely will end up pleasing none.

It is, of course, not the only massive stimulus package being deployed against the threat of depression. China has announced a $586 billion package, which in reality may be rather less than that, since more than half of the sum seems already prefigured in existing budgets or is expected to come from local governments that claim to be broke. Still, it is aimed much more precisely than the U.S. bill at building infrastructure, reinforcing public health and environmental cleanup.

So China, which already has an impressive and modern infrastructure, is (notionally) spending 20 percent of GDP on improving it, while the United States, which has a dangerously obsolescent infrastructure, is spending less than 1 percent of its GDP on fixing it. And the Association of Civil Engineers says the United States has a deficit of $2 trillion in urgent infrastructure spending needs.

It will be interesting to see which comes out of recession faster, China or the United States. And we'll also see which country gets more bang for the stimulus buck.

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