With the economy tanking at the end of 2008 and the Republican Party being dragged down with it, the mandate for progressive economic change in government could not have been clearer.

With this in mind, even before President Obama entered office, the preparations began for an economic stimulus package of historic proportions to fight economic recession and invest in the economic future of our country.

Considering Obama’s high approval ratings (hovering around 70%) and his mandate for economic recovery, the passage of Obama’s stimulus package came as no surprise.

The contents of the bill itself, however, should come as a surprise.

Instead of the package every progressive economist and think tank has been calling for, the Obama administration watered down the bill by lowering its size and adding tax cuts. He did this in order to gain Republican votes, yet no House Republicans voted for the bill and it only garnered the support for a few Senate Republicans.

President Obama’s push to the middle was not only politically embarrassing, but the now weakened bill may have serious economic consequences.

The best example of how compromise weakened the bill is the exorbitant 70 billion dollars being spent for the Alternative Minimum Tax Relief provision. This stipulation was added to please the Senate Republican moderates. Not only was the 70 billion dollars given to mostly high-income individuals, but according to a Urban Institute-Brookings Institution report, it provides “virtually no economic stimulus.”

These efforts to reach out to Republicans are not only unsuccessful, but they waste billions of dollars that could go toward programs that actually stimulate the economy.

Even more devastating is the relatively small size of the stimulus package compared to the amount that would actually be necessary to fill in the production gap caused by the recession over the next several years

A report by the economic analysis team at Goldman Sachs (certainly not a leftist institution) argued that the stimulus package passed could “prove insufficient” and that current economic conditions would “justify a stimulus totaling $2 trillion.”

At only $787 billion, a decrease of $100 billion after negotiations, the stimulus package is less than half the size needed to effectively combat a deep recession. This means more job losses and lower economic growth over the long term.

Many moderate supporters of the Obama administration argue that it was pragmatic to include these changes in the face of a potential Senate Republican filibuster. This outlook ignores the severe consequences of enacting bad legislation. If Obama hadn’t compromised, moderate Republicans would have either crumbled under the pressure of the president’s popularity and his package, or faced serious electoral consequences in 2010.

President Obama’s mistaken approach on the stimulus was laid out succinctly by economist Paul Krugman, who wrote that the stimulus debate with the Republican Party “isn’t a brainstorming session — it’s a collision of fundamentally incompatible world views.”

In other words, Democrats either believe in Keynesian economics or not. If they stick to their principles, then it would require that they drop any pretense that they have to embrace economic policies that are diametrically opposed to their own.

If the Obama administration does not remain true to its own economic values, we can all forget about economic recovery and the Obama administration can forget about its progressive base.