William McGurn: Stimulus? There's No Stimulus Here. - WSJ.com

William McGurn: Stimulus? There's No Stimulus Here. - WSJ.com: "Assuming that Barack Obama holds another White House press conference—his last was back in July—here's a question worth asking: If the stimulus is truly the success you and your team claim, why are you so reluctant to use the word?

It's a timely question, with Congress returning to Washington this week after a year of record spending. Right now the spotlight is on the effort by the Democratic leadership to ram through a health-care bill—any health-care bill—in time for the president to declare victory in his State of the Union. But a second stimulus may not be far behind, with the House having already passed a version before members left for Christmas.

The House approved its $154 billion second stimulus package in its last vote of 2009, little more than a week after a policy address Mr. Obama delivered at the Brookings Institution. In that Dec. 8 speech, he reviewed the progress of the earlier stimulus—the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009—and used the occasion to call for additional congressional spending. The headlines rightly described what he was proposing as a 'second stimulus.'

Yet perhaps the most intriguing part of that speech is what the president did not say."