As this post is being written, Republicans are dusting off the flip-flopper meme they employed to beat Sen. John Kerry’s presidential bid to death in 2004, to use on President Obama in 2012, all thanks to Obama’s brain-dead decision to impose a three-year freeze on domestic spending.
You can hear them already, saying, “Obama was for big stimulus spending before he was for cutting spending and balancing the budget — absolute proof he squandered $780 billion on a recession remedy that wasn’t working.”
As talk-show host Thom Hartmann put it, by calling for this spending freeze, Obama is validating Republicans’ tried-and-proven-wrong measure, needlessly and foolishly ceding to them an ideological victory that they will use against him soon enough.
From an economic standpoint, cutting domestic spending in a period of high unemployment and economic stagnation is a formula for prolonging the agony. It makes as much sense as spraying water on a grease fire. President Herbert Hoover proved that eight decades ago.
What the economy desperately needs is increased demand for goods and services by consumers and businesses with money to spend. Demand will cause employers to start hiring again. Demand leading to increased employment and business activity will eliminate the need to keep extending unemployment benefits and cause federal, state and local tax revenues to increase — eventually making budget-balancing possible without hurting people, business and governments.
Rapid, large-scale government spending can pump up demand and put people in jobs, further increasing demand. The problems with Obama’s stimulus plan are that it’s too small, is being parceled out too slowly and fails to directly hire large numbers of people for things the public needs to have done.
We would like to know why Obama made this terrible decision. What can he be thinking?
Most likely, he’s spooked by Scott Brown’s election win in Massachusetts and heeding conservative Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Indiana, who after that outcome spouted off about Democrats being too liberal and trying to “impose their will on the rest of the country.”
Why is it that Obama can hear this red-state DINO who doesn’t know squat about economics loud and clear, but can’t seem to make out the waving, pleading and screaming of all the loyal supporters who helped him make it to the White House?
Rhodes
Rhodes said Obama will also include some other things in his big omnibus budget bill, like health care reform. If Republicans try to block his budget with a filibuster, Senate Democrats will go to reconciliation. She pointed out that Republicans used that strategy to pass the S-CHIP program and Bush’s big tax cuts.
That’s plausible, but at this point we’re not buying it. We’ve watched Obama blunder two or three times, thinking maybe he had some very subtle, very clever surprise up his sleeve — only to find out the bad move we saw coming was all there was to it.
Obama says he’d rather be a good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president, as if those are the only two alternatives. The way he’s mishandling things, he stands a good chance of being remembered as a mediocre one-term president.
Damn liberals and their health care and clean water and corporate non-personhood. If I was a corporation, or the Pentagon, I’d be screaming, but thankfully, as a person, I’m only second class and better get back to growing the company’s paradigm shifter.
I wish Obama would let me write a paragraph or two in tonight’s speech. I might say:
Just a thought S.W.
The Republican-Lite approach never works. He should say what Holte said.
I’ve always disliked Evan Bayh, for one reason. Several years ago, his e-mail system had some sort of spam filter which filtered out ALL e-mails he didn’t want. This included petitions, mass e-mailings from constituents, anything from the lowly public that he didn’t want to be bothered with. As far as I know, he never changed it even though there was a lot of publicity about it on the Internet.
Democrats have always been Democrats’ worst enemy. It should be the result of thinking for oneself and social empathy, but more frequently seems motivated by the fear of losing conservative votes that they never had to begin with.
I am not a happy bee. It think after I watch this state of the union address, I might have to swarm.
Randal, as a person you are first class. Quirky, but first class all the way. If you were the Pentagon, the military-industrial complex would spend the next several years getting itself outsourced, but recruiting troops would be a whole new ballgame, literally.
Holte, your thought is right on target. That’s just what Obama should say.
Tom, I didn’t know that. Helps explain why talk about Bayh being presidential material went nowhere. Exactly where such talk belongs.
Jeff, that’s an astute observation, accurate about too many, but not all, Democrats.
Bee, LOL, either that or at least get a little buzz on to deaden the pain.