Clinton-era budget chief Alice Rivlin warned Congress of three possible errors they could commit when legislating President Obama’s first stimuless package: Don’t get distracted from the need to jump start the economy by going Christmas shopping (exactly the opposite of “never letting a crisis go to waste”), don’t write expectation checks the economy may not be able to cash, and don’t wait until the economy recovers before getting busy on the real work of entitlement reform.
Perhaps predictably, having received the irresistible lure of a blank check from a novice president, veteran politicians Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed promptly ignored that advice. And here we are:
Now, nearly three years after Rivlin’s warnings went unheeded, President Obama has groped his way to an agenda that looks more like what she originally recommended. His speech to Congress last week suggested that he intends to campaign for re-election on what should have been the blueprint for his first four years in office: a short-term stimulus highlighted by a payroll tax cut, a medium-term push to overhaul the tax code and a plan for long-term entitlement reform.
To Republicans, this agenda holds out the possibility that a second Obama term might feature more opportunities for compromise and common ground. But to voters pondering whether to make that second term happen, it amounts to a request for a presidential do-over — a tacit admission that the White House’s first-term agenda has been less than successful, and a plea for a second chance to get things right.
I honestly don’t blame President Obama for the current mess we’re in. He inherited a burgeoning crisis that nothing in his experience – writing auto-biographies, chiefly – could prepare him for. I do find myself wondering why Pelosi and Reed keep turning up every four to six years like bad pennies. Probably because, having clawed their way over time to the top of an ambitious heap of gift-givers – always with someone else’s money – that their constituents find their flaws charming.
It’s enough to make one wish that our constitution permitted a general plebiscite every four years allowing the ten most unpopular and destructive politicians to be removed from office. Such a thing would be anti-federalist, of course, and the pols themselves would never go for it.
But think of the possibilities.
Meanwhile, the Washington Examiner takes a look at Mr. Obama’s s new stimuless jobs proposal, only to discover that the president’s only solution to any given problem is a hammer, which makes him believe that every problem looks like a nail:
The Jobs Act, which is best described as Obama’s Stimulus II, will cost somewhere around $450 billion — more than half as big as Obama’s first failed stimulus. White House Budget Director Jack Lew is the man charged with identifying how Obama will pay for this new spending bill. The answer will not surprise you: It’s all about tax hikes.
Lew kicked off Monday’s White House presser by saying he wants to limit tax deductions for individuals making more than $200,000 a year (and families making more than $250,000 a year), raise taxes on capital gains, raise taxes on oil companies and slow down tax depreciation of corporate jets. If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is the exact same list of tax hikes that Obama pushed Congress to include in its debt limit deal this summer. At that time, Obama was pushing these tax hikes as part of the “shared sacrifice” needed to reduce the debt. Now he’s using these same provisions to pay for even higher deficit spending.
Pressed to explain how Obama could use the same tax hikes to both meet the debt deal’s deficit reduction targets and pay for his new stimulus plan, Lew admitted that even Obama can’t count the same tax increases for two separate purposes. Instead, Lew said that Obama would be introducing a whole new slate of tax hikes next week, when he plans to give yet another deficit reduction speech.
Obama again insisted Monday that his second stimulus will be “fully paid for.” This is problematic on several levels. If Stimulus II is fully paid for with immediate tax hikes, then it isn’t the kind of deficit spending that Obama’s Keynesian logic demands. If it is only paid for later, at the end of the 10-year horizon, then this amounts to a budget gimmick, because Obama will be long gone from office by then.
“No doubt the President will make this all clear in his next speech.”
No doubt..
(PS: Is that “all clear” as in: “perfectly clear?“) Jus’ wondering..
Yes. His teleprompter has no doubt been upgraded with a practice mode, as well as silent alarms to wake him up, and keep him going.
…Yes he will… right after the useless bastard says…
“I’m from the government and I’m here to help you”. Best
I do find myself wondering why Pelosi and Reed keep turning up every four to six years like bad pennies.
Lack of term limits.
+1
+10
Bad politicians are like a bad drug. Once you’re addicted, you play hell getting clear of it. The really tough part is figuring out the ‘tough love intervention’ part, but I agree that term limits is a good way to intervene. I’m liking the twelve year number myself…
Wow. A twofer on moderation today. Damn, I’m good!
Don’t get cocky. You ain’t approaching VX’s record yet. I haven’t, even as bad I’ve been.
We already have term limits and have since the founding of the Republic; two years for Representatives; six years for Senators and four years for the President. Do we really want to say to citizens, “You can’t vote for that person?”
Do we really want to say to citizens, “You can’t vote for that person?”
Not exactly that. We don’t allow Presidents to serve more than 2 terms. Why is the rest of Congress exempt from that rule?
You get the likes of Pelosi, Reed, Kennedy, et al – entrenched in their “lifetime appointments” where they forget what they were originally elected to do – represent their constituencies.
They keep turning up because they accurately represent their constiuents. Pelosi’s from San Fancisco, the only extra-galactic part of the US. Reid represents Vegas (the rest of Nevada can pound sand) this is the part where I hold a finger to the side of my nose.
I hope y’all will permit me a “What the F#*k!” over this nearly half a trillion dollar goat rope to get America’s job market airborne. I’m sure all the ancillary costs will take the program over a trillion, but to what end any of it?
Lower business taxes and eliminate senseless business regulations, and the thrust to weight ratio improves dramatically. Or, again, is that contrary to WunWhoWon’s idea in the first place?
Half a trillion dollars. There are a whole lot of small business loans could be made through SCORE, and any number of other agencies, with that kind of money. Acquisition, recaptitalization, restructuring…but, no, let’s give it to government, so they can start another game between a damn fool monkey and a football.
She nailed it.
Until someone taps these idiots on the shoulder with the wake-up call, “Hey, transfer payments do not increase GDP,” these idiots will continue to sleepwalk.
.
I’m failing to see even the Keynesian logic in this one. Per the Keynesian model, increased spending will cause an increase in aggregate demand, causing GDP to increase. Per the Keynesian model, increased taxation will cause a decrease in aggregate demand.
Now, this is where the Krugman will come in stating: “No contradiction there, Geo. The multiplier for spending is much greater than the multiplier for taxation, so there will be a net gain, you peasant!”
Seeing as how the greatest spending multiplier was in 1939 at a value of .8 and taxation is of at least 1.0, the math says that all this will do is burn more wealth.
Which may be the point.
Obama with his background of a community organizer and fronting for his “autobiography” was not prepaired for for what was a head of him if he won the presidentcy. But his handlers should have. He was selected because he was/is window dressing and it was time for the black man to come into his place. There surely was better examplae than what we got. In any case we have what we have and we did dance to the ffeddler and now it is time to pay the feddler. Unfortuniatly we have paid greatly and now we will have to pay more.
Contrary to our host, I do blame Barry. He ran for election, and won. That makes it his job & his responsibility.
Given his education and background, after the first 18 months (at best) he should have realized the favored nostrums weren’t working. I expect, alas, that Roger Simon of PJ Media has it right when he claims that not only does Obama believe he’s right in his objectives, but that he’s doing a good job. For those who claim liberal/progressives can be neither flexible nor pragmatic, I cite FDR and Bill Clinton in evidence.
To paraphrase Jon Stewart, for two years Obama had a far stronger majority than Bush ever did, and during his administration Bush did “whatever the f**k he wanted to.” One would expect Teh One to have accomplished more by 2010.
Dude, I would hate to have been the subject of a not-so-good fitrep or eval from you.
Your charitable description of Obama’s first year in office redounds to your virtue, but I think the reality is quite different. We have a man completely out of his league – the only aspect of his presidency more apparent than his big government (I would say socialist) ideology is his basic incompetence. Hermann Cain has described Obama as the ‘affirmative action’ president, a man elected for the color of his skin over other far more qualified candidates. That is a very harsh assessment, but I don’t think it totally unfair. Many voted for Obama for racial reasons alone, in spite of his stunning lack of qualifications and his widely known socialist views (which, even in the face of a media which completely destroyed its last shreds of credibility in campaigning for him, was still known to the large majority of people – they just chose to look the other way, believing in ‘hope,’ and not the great theological virtue).
Obama’s first plan was always to expand government as massively as he could. The stimulus wasn’t that, it was the expansion of government to a new, hugely expanded baseline size. Coupled with his socialized health insurance scheme, and the outrageous actions of executive branch agencies like the EPA and ATF, we have had a full on assault on this country’s center-right paradigm. All of this is intentional, not accidental. We are actually fortunate Obama is so incompetent (and, apparently, not terribly interested in hard work), or the damage done could have been much worse.
I do blame Obama for much of the mess we’re in, he and his party, anyway. The entitlement mentality he and his party embody are the root cause of the sovereign debt crisis both here and around the world.
As was famously said, the chickens are coming home to roost.