Tired of the Mind Games
The Republican vocabulary regarding the stimulus bill has been ugly, ugly, ugly. They call job creation pork. They call infrastructure investment wasteful spending. In both the House and the Senate, Republicans have introduced amendments calling for tax cuts only — pure fiscal lunacy and a core principle of the ruinous fiscal policy of the last eight years.
In other words, Congressional Republicans are playing mind games to keep our country on the same economic track (the one that goes down) along with the same bankrupt economic theories.
A popular term in the progressive blogosphere comes to mind: “the reality-based community.”
This is the reality we live in:
Job losses are getting out of control. That’s reality. That’s the way it is.
The news over the weekend is that the Senate compromise bill is likely to remove funding for education and new schools (and other direct-to-the-states funding that could save jobs of teachers, firefighters, law enforcement, etc), new Coast Guard ships, and Federal government green initiatives. Pretty much every item getting the axe in the proposed Senate version represents a good opportunity for job creation with the bonus of infrastructure building. I hope that whatever remains will be enough to boost us out of our economic hole.
Also, the size of the recovery bill is obviously not really what bothers Congressional Republicans. After all, many of them supported (and a Republican President signed into law) last year’s stimulus bill (which focused on giving lots of money to large financial institutions). Furthermore, many of the same Republican senators who object to the size of the 2009 recovery bill voted in 2001 for $1.3 trillion worth of Bush tax cuts to fight the recession at that time. Well guess what: a tax cut won’t get anybody a job, and the wealthy target audience of Bush-era tax cuts is more likely to keep the money rather than spend it (an inverse multiplier effect).
At this point we’re witnessing either complete out-of-touch confusion or pure grandstanding on the part of Congressional Republicans, and either way I’m getting sick of it.
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February 9th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
I’m not with you on this one, LubbockLeft. There are only two models of recession/depression recovery. There is the F.D.R. model. And there is the Ronald Reagan model. Everything else is basically a variant of those two.
The F.D.R. model (prior to the industrial boom of World War II) did not work. Sorry dude. Been there, done that.
The Reagan model did work. Even your own chart shows the Reagan model worked in 2001. We were supposed to have the worst recession/depression in history after September 11th 2001, remember? That’s what all the experts said. So, why didn’t it happen that way? It’s because President Bush won the battle over tax cuts and it was followed by 50 months of uninterrupted job growth.
I think what I’ve heard most Republicans saying is that some of these projects won’t have any lasting impact on the economy. It’s kind of like building a post office in 1933. It’s a worthy project. But those jobs don’t last very long. And you’ve got to either raise taxes or borrow money to pay the workers.
Presidents don’t create jobs. They just don’t. Americans who start businesses create jobs.
I didn’t agree with the manner in which the Bush Administration handled the Bank bailout money. I thought the smartest thing to do was to create a program by which loans could be set at a fixed interest rate and the principal partially bought down to the point where the borrower was back to his/her original monthly payments.
Nobody would get a free house. But nobody would get tossed out because they’re payments doubled. Banks would have to make sacrifice of negotiating a lower fixed rate. But in exchange they weren’t stuck with dozens or hundreds of foreclosed properties that they had to sell at firesale prices.
Too late now.
Instead, the government bought stock in banks and was shocked to learn that the money was used for corporate junkets, bank buyouts, and (shocker) C.E.O. bonuses.
With all due respect to George W. Bush, the Bush Administration just makes my point. You see it as a Republican blunder. I see it as big government is clumsy. I don’t think the government can fix the recession. Sorry. Big government actually got in the way by allowing banks to buy up other banks. How the heck did that help? The bank bailout killed more banks than it saved.
I think the government can temporarily take the tax burden off businesses that hire new employees. I think there can be tax credits for businesses that offer their employees retraining, professional continuing education & such rather than layoffs. I think the government can get out of the way of a recovery. But I don’t believe the government is the recovery.
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” — Gerald Ford.
February 9th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Jeez, good thing they didn’t cut from anything important!! How about some cuts in fatcats salaries!!
February 9th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
1) The FDR model did work. It was only when conservatives convinced FDR to stop several key New Deal programs after his 1936 reelection that the economy worsened and we had the 1938 recession. Those New Deal programs were restarted that year, and the economy was improving continuously even before we entered WW2.
2) The Reagan model (and the Bush model) worked — sorta — and not as effectively or equitably as the FDR model. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer (and the middle class got weaker) under both administrations. And, both Reagan and Bush added record amounts to our national debt.
The fact is that the Federal government can and does create jobs both directly and indirectly (just as state and local governments do). Of course most jobs come from the private sector, but when the private sector can’t keep up, it’s up to government to step in and create more jobs. Doing so can head off economic disaster and keep a recession from turning into a depression.
As for the Bush Administration being clumsy — yup. It made all the wrong decisions economically, and all the usual compensating tools (like adjusting the Fed rate) have been used up. It supports my theory that Democrats govern better than Republicans as a general rule. :P
February 9th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
I’m watching President Obama live. I came in late but I got here in time for Chuck Todd’s question. Obama says that what “got us into this mess” is that banks took wild risks with other people’s money. Once the banks got into trouble, credit contracted and businesses that rely upon that credit could not make payroll.
Hmmmm. So the government didn’t create this mess, right? What do you want to bet the Government can’t fix it either. But just as importantly, it’s not all George W. Bush’s fault. OMG. There are other people to blame! (Oh wait. Dang it. I forgot. Those are other people are Dick Nancy and Nancy Reagan. Nevermind.)
For the sake of all Americans, let’s hope Obama is right. I don’t like seeing anyone suffer with high unemployment. (I guess that means I’m not a good Republican.)
February 9th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Phil Gramm is another to blame. He created the unregulated market for credit default swaps and other such financial instruments that banks got in trouble with. And I don’t think it was a good idea to let banks and i-banks combine, either.
The whole thing reminds me of the Savings & Loan scandals from the 80s, except that mortgage-backed securities are an order of magnitude worse.
I TIVOed the Obama speech — hopefully I will have time to watch it later tonight.
February 10th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Can you beleive the pork that is in this thing. We may never recover from such an overnight growth in government spending and control. I thought they were trying to promote griowth and create jobs……all they have done is promote more waste.
February 10th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
What you’re calling “pork” is exactly what will promote growth and create jobs. The private sector has fallen flat on its face. It’s time for us to step and use our governmental toolkit to fix this crisis.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:22 am
I don’t agree with Mr. Conservative at Lubbockonline when he says the Obama’s stimulus will kill jobs. But I don’t think it will have a lasting effect on creating jobs either. I still really think the best thing we can do is lower taxes on those businesses that hire new people. A tax break for a small company in little-bitty Lubbock, Texas is a big deal. Other-n-that I ain’t got no ‘pinion on the matter.