In economic stimulus, numbers have ceased to matter.

The current package before Congress is $819 billion, but it could be a quadrillion, for all it matters. What’s been proposed is stimulus at any cost, because continued lagging of American economic output is a failure beyond comfortable calculation.

Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are center stage in this debate, by virtue of their center-right leanings. Their lobbies are filled with lobbyists and their ears are filled with pleas, suggestions and threats, perhaps, of what their vote on the stimulus means, either way.

Stakes are high. So are the costs. But Maine’s senators must ignore both of those, we think, in favor of the simplest approach to evaluating the merits of the stimulus: Prove to us it is going to work, they should say, and soon. Shortcomings or delays need not apply.

Praise and damnation for the stimulus from the right and left are both steeped in truth. The country does need targeted programs to strengthen safety nets, help states stem red ink and put people to work through infrastructure and other investments.

But it doesn’t need a wish list, the rush to fulfill an ideological agenda that’s been stewing for eight years under the former administration. There’s time for that later. Right now, there’s a country, an economy and a basic way of life that needs rescuing.

Most of all, though, the country needs a program that works. Fast. This is where Snowe and Collins can hold sway, by bringing common sense to the stimulus legislation through the application of basic, pragmatic principles.

The country has already spent in haste. The 2007 stimulus cut checks to every American, which felt great, but flopped. The 2008 rescue for banks on their eves of destruction is looking like the money was thrown into a gaping maw, never to be seen again.

That Congress is now pressuring banks to lend their bailout funds, instead of hoarding them, is testimony to the contradictory nature of that bailout/rescue/stimulus. The $700 billion was meant to stabilize the economy, not those institutions that acted so recklessly to destroy it.

So here we are, as Americans, burned twice by major spending packages that haven’t spurred the desired effect – stanching our economic bleeding and injecting fiscal penicillin to kill the diseases spreading through our markets. Two strikes. We can’t afford a third.

President Barack Obama has presented the most thoughtful package to date. There’s little question that expertise and intellect replaced emotion and paranoia as the sentiments driving its creation. The questions that remain are basic: Does it work, and how soon?

These are what Sens. Collins and Snowe should have answered to their satisfaction before deciding which way to vote. The numbers and stakes are high, obviously.

What matters is that this stimulus package makes sense, and that it works. Quickly.