I don't see how any of those things will hinder the recovery. I can see how someone could make the argument that some of them are bad for the economy in the long-term (especially the auto bailout and the union bailouts), but in the short term those programs are all flooding the economy with cash...except for arguably #2, which doesn't really have much of an effect at all until 2014. I don't see how the other policies could possibly NOT boost aggregate demand and hasten the recovery.
There are some valid criticisms of all these policies...but I don't think slowing down the economic recovery is among them.
1.) American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
Helped shore up businesses, banks and extended temp jobs - but otherwise increased growth stagnation. Company's aren't increasing their workforce, they are becoming solvent and keep liquid assets available in still uncertain times. Jobs were not affected after 800 Billion dollars was invested, and by now much was spent. Effect of said investment on jobs? Still 9.5% unemployment or close to 17% actual unemployment. This hinders recovery as it provided money to wall street and buisness with no payoff to mainstreet. Promises were extensive... so far, it's a bust.
2.) Affordable Care Act
No effects supposedly until 2014... yet premiums are rising.
FOXNews.com - Health Care Premiums Are Already Soaring In Advance of Obamacare
This hinders recovery as insurance premiums rise hitting individual users and raising costs quarterly / yearly during an extended recession where people already have a tough time making ends meet. How does increasing insurance company costs help our economy? It doesn't - and I think we all knew that the insurance company's wouldn't be bearing the brunt of costs without passing it off on their customers. Since we still do not have the ability to purchase insurance across state lines, we're all still stuck and now worse than ever. It's early yet, but this has high potential to get worse.
3.) CARS Program (aka - Cash for Clunkers)
This artificially created demand but the demand wasn't what we thought. Edmunds.com identified about 690K cars were bought during the CARS program, yet 565,000 would have been bought anyway, leaving the remainder of 120K or so being artificially stimulated. Since we (the taxpayers) spent $3 billion on the program, that's about $24,000 per car. The Toyota Carolla was the most popular purchased car under the program which sold for about $16K - so we overpaid. What hindered us here is we had people trade in perfectly good vehicles which in many cases were paid off and costing the consumer only upkeep and insurance, and turned around and used their own future tax money to incentivize them to purchase a new car, where they'll pay payments or outlay cash they ordinarily would still have... all under the guise of better fuel mileage and lower carbon footprint. Using your own money to entice you to spend more of your own money on something you didn't need in the first place... that's a Ponzi scheme Madoff would be proud to see.
4.) Troubled Assets Recovery Program (TARP) - all versions including Obama's extension of it.
[quote="Inspector General Quarterly Report to Congress January 2010, Page 7]
Many of TARP’s stated goals, however, have simply not been met. Despite the
fact that the explicit goal of the Capital Purchase Program (“CPP”) was to increase
financing to U.S. businesses and consumers, lending continues to decrease, month
after month, and the TARP program designed specifically to address small-business
lending — announced in March 2009 — has still not been implemented by
Treasury. Notwithstanding the fact that preserving homeownership and promoting
jobs were explicit purposes of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008
(“EESA”), the statute that created TARP, nearly 16 months later, home foreclosures
remain at record levels, the TARP foreclosure prevention program has only
permanently modified a small fraction of eligible mortgages, and unemployment is
the highest it has been in a generation. Whether these goals can effectively be met
through existing TARP programs is very much an open question at this time. And
to the extent that the Government had leverage through its status as a significant
preferred shareholder to influence the largest TARP recipients to carry out such
policy goals, it was lost with their exit from TARP.[/quote]
http://www.sigtarp.gov/reports/congress/2010/January2010_Quarterly_Report_to_Congress.pdf
This hinders us by again having government use future taxpayer money and having said program not achieve it's goal and as most see it, failed miserably. Adding more debt is not helping.
5.) FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act (which includes the 28 billion for the teachers union bailout / payoff)
This one may actually be the lesser of evils in the list. By sliding in a payoff to school unions in an FAA Air Transportation bill, this one just seems like a big pork pay off. It's simple, it's 28 billion and it's uncomplicated. Other than promising a bailout of teachers now, and the ultimate political spin that's attached to this bribe - it's is what it is. This hinders us by sheltering one segment of the population and paying them off with -- what else, future tax payer money, to placate unions and the teachers associated with them. Yet more money we do not have, cannot afford to "share the wealth" of others to certain politically important segments of society for strictly political gain.