No Joke.(A)(EDITORIALS)

Economic Stimulus: The joke around Washington -- or is it Wall Street? -- is that we're going to get more tax relief "whether we need it or not." Which helps explain why the stimulus plans floated so far are so insipid.

We suspect the cynics who doubt the need to further goose the economy through fiscal policy are the same ones who questioned the need for the Fed to do it by monetary means.

Fortunately, the Fed paid no attention to them and gave us the half-point rate cut no one thought was needed or possible. Hopefully, the White House and Congress won't listen to them either and will press ahead with measures to produce what President Bush has ordered up: growth and jobs.

The cynics apparently still think this slowdown is like others that took just a little time or tweaking to get through. Our point right along is that we haven't seen a downturn like this in decades, and that it'll take a lot more stimulus than normal to get us back up to speed.

This is not 1990-1991. Or even 1980-1982. It's more like 1973-1974 or 1929-1932, which rank with the latest downturn as our worst market periods ever. In each of those cases it took years, not months, to recover. We fear that unless extraordinary actions are taken, it'll take just as long this time.

What we've heard from the stimulus front, however, can hardly be called extraordinary. Hackneyed is more like it. Easing the marriage penalty, increasing the child tax credit, suspending the payroll tax, even eliminating the double-taxation of dividends -- we've heard it all ...