"The problem is, it won't work, and the American people will be watching at some point in the future to say, 'Well, what happened?'" Rep. Tom Price of Georgia told me.

The chairman of the 100-member caucus of GOP conservatives calls Obama's plan "the non-stimulus," like the un-cola, because whenever it has been tried in the past, it has failed to boost economic growth.

One wonders if any White House reporter at the president's next news conference will ask Obama to point to another spending stimulus program that pulled the economy out of a recession. When I have put that question to economists, they can't come up with one example where infrastructure spending has worked.

So Obama and the Democrats have a lot of political capital riding on the hope of his plan's success in the face of a deep recession, worsened by a shaky financial system. But its prospects in the short term do not look good.

Republicans have a lot at stake, too, if they are to rebuild confidence in their party's shattered brand. But now they are united in a common bond in favor of some fundamentally sound economic principles that are at the core of their party's agenda: lower taxes for workers and businesses, along with reductions in the size and cost of government and its crushing debt.

That debt is going to grow exponentially under the Obama regime as it tries to prove that you can have a much bigger, costlier government and a stronger economy all at the same time.

The trick, they think, is to offer a little trickle-down tax relief in exchange for a breathtaking expansion of government that they believe will solve all of the economy's problems.

But Obama's big government requires a lot of money and that is going to be obtained through increased borrowing and higher taxation, making an undernourished economy even weaker.

The GOP is betting that the American people will come to understand that sooner rather than later.