Obama in fantasyland over stimulus
Barack Obama is defending the "stimulus" bill:
President Barack Obama said his $787 billion stimulus bill “has worked as intended” as he pushed back against Republican criticism that his recovery program has failed to rescue the economy.Obama is living in a fantasy land if he thinks his economic plans are working "as intended." It was sold as a plan to "create" jobs and keep down unemployment, which was never supposed rise above 8% with "stimulus" bill. It has failed as unemployment is well over 9% and is expected to rise over 10%, by the president's own admission.“It has already extended unemployment insurance and health insurance to those who have lost their jobs in this recession,” Obama, who is traveling today in Ghana, said in his weekly Saturday radio and Web address. “It has delivered $43 billion in tax relief to American working families and business.”
Were it not for the stimulus program, the president said, “state deficits would be nearly twice as large as they are now, resulting in tens of thousands of additional layoffs -- layoffs that would affect police officers, teachers, and firefighters.”
Obama's claim about state deficits may be true, but all Congress has done is nationalized those deficits and contributed to the budget deficit of the country as a whole. Bastiat wrote about the unseen effects of this economic view.
The inevitable crowding out of the economy to come and the higher interest rates that go with it should be a concern. We're going to go through all of this again in ten years.
Comments
I think you misunderstand Obama's comment. His porkulus bill IS working as intended. It's paying off all of his political allies, buying additional votes, cementing his support amoung the welfare class, and rendering political cover for his additional power grabs, the least of which is his Leninist Czar program.
Posted by: KDSplawn | July 11, 2009 12:23 PM
Have you ever noticed that a Democrap always and I mean always uses.. police,fire fighters,and teachers because it is for the children when they talk about debt... they never mention parks,battlefields,horse arenas,golf courses,sidewalks to nowhere,fireworks shows, and all those other quality of life must haves....like the Republicans do...
Its never non essential service that COULD be cut it is always the police and fire fighters that will have to be cut.That and bus service for the school children cause there just isn't enough money....
MMM is that so we will be fearful enough to continue to vote them back in to office?
Don
Posted by: Don Henderson | July 11, 2009 01:09 PM
How about that 18 million dollar contract for the redesign of Recovery.org?
$9.5 million of that to be spent through January.
Insanity.
Posted by: Sarah A, | July 11, 2009 07:31 PM
Good post Jason. The bi-partisan natural of HUGE government stimuli bills act as symptom relief from economic pain. In other words, it may feel better, but the underlying cause is unaltered.
I think both sides of the aisle agree, America needs to begin to produce more goods. My premise is our production ought to be tied to a huge increase exporting pollution control technology and advances in medicine.
America's greatness lies in our ability to innovate and our ingenuity. We have some of the tightest environmental laws and enforcement on the planet.
Exporting environmental technology and processes to China, India, Russia, others, would be a huge economic boost. And, of course, it is the RIGHT thing to do.
Our national debate on leading edge bio-medicine needs to be resolved so that science can move forward with medical advances that will contain or prevent diseases.
We must begin the process of making the export of medical and environmental advances our biggest industries.
That's neither Liberal or Conservative, that's just good business.
Posted by: Max Lehmann | July 12, 2009 09:38 AM