Speaker Pelosi sat down with Al Hunt on his Bloomberg TV program on Friday to discuss the outlook for a much-discussed and greatly anticipated economic stimulus package -- yes, another one -- on tap for the first weeks of the Obama administration.

Just what have they got in mind? Well, they've got numbers, anyway:

MR. HUNT: Give me a sense of the size and scope of that measure you anticipate passing.

REP. PELOSI: This week we had our most recent presentations from economists to tell us what - how robust such a package should be in order to have an impact on the economy, to turn the economy around, from Mark Zandi, who was the economic adviser to John McCain, across the spectrum. Economists told us that the package had to be strong enough, half a trillion, $600 billion, somewhere near that.

I'm astonished at the numbers we see being talked about for, well, everything these days. $700 billion for the Wall Street bailout. An eventual total of something like $34 billion for the auto manufacturers bailout. Now a $600 billion stimulus package. And let's not forget that while the need won't be immediate, the last Iraq supplemental was designed to carry into the new administration, but only by a few months, to give the next president a chance to find his footing before having to look for new funding for that effort.

And I don't know that this will make things any easier:

REP. PELOSI: [...] We certainly will be - are working closely with the Obama administration-to be people, and to see where their comfort level is. My measure of what will be successful is what is stimulating what is job-creating? Will there be tax cuts as part of this package?

MR. HUNT: Will there?

REP. PELOSI: I believe that there will be. And I have to have a clear hold on the cost, because we want to have enough investment to change the economic path we’re on, but not so much that we’re weighted down with a bigger deficit.

Well, you know, why not? I mean, why not? I'm increasingly convinced there's no such thing as a fundamentals-based economy anymore, so what the hell, right? All the numbers seem pretty much imaginary at this point. It almost seems like there's no point in worrying about balancing the books at this stage of the game, though that surely won't be the position of the "fiscally conservative" Blue Dog coalition, great champions of the PAYGO rules as they are.

That's where the battle lines are likely to be drawn. The great bulk of Republicans can, of course, be expected to oppose the package for one reason or another. That'll put them in the neighborhood of 170 opposed, depending on what excuses they latch on to. At least, that's the potential resistance strength among the 178 Republicans who'll be in the 111th Congress. Depending on circumstances, there should surely be some of them who find voting against a package aimed at economic recovery uncomfortable. But I don't see circumstances changing between now and then all that greatly, and there was very little discomfort in voting against the auto bailout, and not much more in voting against saving the entire global economic structure, as was alleged to have been at the heart of the Wall Street bailout. So we might expect the Republicans to play politics rather aggressively with this next vote.

The question, then, will be how the Blue Dogs break? That answer will depend on who actually constitutes the Blue Dogs in the 111th. They've lost a few members to the election, and are considering expanding their numbers this time around. They're likely to hover at something close to 20-25% of the caucus at large, giving them (in theory) the power to block the stimulus or any other piece of legislation, assuming the opposition of most Republicans.

But the Blue Dogs fractured rather badly on the last two major league economic votes. How much more likely are they to stand unified in opposition to what will be the first major economic initiative of President Obama's term? Might they not prefer to play to their populist leanings here? Or at least duck and cover for the time being, and go with the flow? They were mostly wiling to overlook the lack of offsets for the last round of Iraq funding. Maybe it'll be just as difficult for them to stick to their guns in the face of a failing economy.