Now, how does it taste?
…The program crafted by Obama and the Democratic Congress wasn’t engineered to maximize its economic impact. It was mostly a political exercise, designed to claim credit for any recovery, shower benefits on favored constituencies and signal support for fashionable causes.
As a result, much of the stimulus’s potential benefit has been squandered. Spending increases and tax cuts are sprinkled in too many places and, all too often, are too delayed to do much good now. Nor do they concentrate on reviving the economy’s most depressed sectors: state and local governments; the housing and auto industries. None of this means the stimulus won’t help or precludes a recovery, but the help will be weaker than necessary….
…There are growing demands for another Obama “stimulus” on the grounds that the first was too small. Wrong. The problem with the first stimulus was more its composition than its size. With budget deficits for 2009 and 2010 estimated by the CBO at $1.8 trillion and $1.4 trillion (respectively, 13 and 9.9 percent of gross domestic product), it’s hard to argue they’re too tiny. Obama and congressional Democrats sacrificed real economic stimulus to promote parochial political interests. Any new “stimulus” should be financed by culling some of the old.
Here, as elsewhere, there’s a gap between Obama’s high-minded rhetoric and his performance. In February, Obama denounced “politics as usual” in constructing the stimulus. But that’s what we got, and Obama likes the result. Interviewed recently by ABC’s Jake Tapper, he was asked whether he would change anything. Obama seemed to invoke a doctrine of presidential infallibility. “There’s nothing that we would have done differently,” he said.
And that, dear Liberals, is from Robert Samuelson – hardly a card-carrying member of the Vast, Right Wing Conspiracy. And here’s the real kicker – we done told you and we done told you. This is not in the least a surprise to us. We’re spending vast sums of money and none of it is really going to stimulate anything. And Obama and Co would not have done anything different because the whole point of the exercise was to reward those special interests who swung behind Obama during the primaries – and to cement their support for 2012. Obama doesn’t care if the economy gets better – he’s convinced he’s some sort of chosen one who will be re-elected come what may…and believes this because, after all, he managed to get elected even with someone like Wright hung ’round his neck. If Obama can carry that over the finish line, then he’ll easily convince himself that 15% unemployment in 2012 is no obstacle.
He is your man liberals – he is what you went to the mat for; he is the man you backed over and above far more experienced Democrats and then carried him to victory over the vastly more experienced McCain. He said he was going to control spending, lower taxes, rebuild America’s reputation abroad – hope and change everything to heck and gone and he never for a moment intended to do any of it. He suckered you and he fully expects you to remain suckered. I expect it, too. Critical thinking skills seem to be optional for liberals. I mean, if the fact that he’s chicken-poop hiding budget numbers until after a vote doesn’t move you to the GOP camp for 2012, nothing will.
Blogs For Victory 