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This is a very well-done review of the evidence on the effects of fiscal expansion. 1/ piie.com/publications/w…
The big problem with using historical data here is that stimulus is often a response to adverse shocks, which means that it can have a spurious correlation with poor performance; it's as if you said that since people with headaches take aspirin, aspirin causes headaches 2/
They use documentary evidence to isolate fiscal stimulus that was NOT in response to trouble, and finds that in those cases it's expansionary -- a result very relevant to the Trump economy 3/
Thanks to the tax cut but also the GOP relaxing austerity now that they have their own guy in office, we've had quite a lot of fiscal stimulus. Here's the CBO estimate of the cyclically adjusted budget deficit 4/ 
So its not surprising that we've had a moderate growth bump. The thing is, we could have had that long ago, when we really needed it – but the GOP pretended to care about deficits 5/
