President Obama Sticks to Stimulus Script

Morning Bell: President Obama Sticks to Stimulus Script

Mike Brownfield

August 12, 2011 at 9:43 am

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In the 1993 comedy Dave, a small-town presidential impersonator is called on to pretend to be the actual President of the United States when the commander in chief takes ill. Dave steps into the White House, takes his new role too far, and with wide-eyed innocence promises America, “I’m initiating a program to try to find a decent job for every American who wants one.” Yesterday in Holland, Michigan, President Barack Obama made a strikingly similar pledge:

Over the coming weeks, I’m going to be putting out more proposals, week by week, that will help businesses hire and put people back to work. And I’m going to keep at it until every single American who wants a job can find one.

It’s anyone’s guess if President Obama was taking a page from Dave’s playbook, hoping that the magic of Hollywood or the power of a populist message would resonate with Americans, helping to turn around his plummeting poll numbers. But a few things were clear in the President’s speech: Despite all evidence to the contrary, he is still clinging to the notion that the federal government can create jobs, he remains utterly disconnected from the reality that the American people are fundamentally dissatisfied with the direction he is taking the country, and he is doggedly sticking to his favorite script—the story of more federal spending coming to America’s rescue.
Since the beginning of his presidency, Barack Obama has promised that he would spend America out of the recession using the power of the purse, infusing the U.S. economy with stimulus spending in order to save or create millions of jobs. He failed. Despite a $787 billion stimulus package, the unemployment rate is 9.1 percent, job creation is anemic, and as Heritage’s James Sherk and Rea Hederman, Jr., explain in a new paper, the average duration of unemployment hit a new record last month, surpassing 40 weeks for the first time ever.
Yet the President is falling back on more stimulus spending as a solution. In his speech yesterday, Obama told his audience to contact their representatives (again) and demand more spending on infrastructure. And he called for Congress to set aside their divisions so more money can be spent in the Department of Energy to further his green agenda. If you think this is all a re-run, that’s because it is. And we know how the story ends. That’s because an undeniable truth emerges from the President’s stimulus fiction: Government spending does not stimulate economic growth. Heritage’s Nicolas Loris explains why:

Sure, the government can create jobs. They can use our taxpayer dollars to hire workers to dig holes and fill them back up. But if there’s no net gain in productivity and wealth, the job is a waste.
For instance, we could replace all of the world’s mechanized agriculture equipment with hoe wielding farmers, and that would create jobs. But it would also significantly reduce productivity and efficiency. The economic reasoning for switching from more efficient machinery to less efficient human capital is such a baseless plan any politician suggesting it would be laughed out of office.

The failure of government stimulus spending has played itself out time and time again. In the New Deal, Japan in the 1990s, President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2008, and the Obama stimulus last year all failed to generate the hoped-for stimulus.
Yet the President keeps telling his story, and he keeps taking credit for the supposed success of his economic stimulus. But the American people aren’t buying it. As the stock market surges and plummets, Americans’ confidence in the economy keeps sinking—hitting lows not seen since March 2009 during the recession, according to a new Gallup poll. They’re looking for a new direction—one of fiscal restraint and smaller government that they voted for last November.
It’s time to stop re-running the same big-government storyline and put America on a new road of fiscal discipline headed toward economic growth. Congress and the President can start by balancing the budget, lowering spending, and reforming entitlements as laid out in Heritage’s “Saving the American Dream” plan. Yesterday, President Obama said, “We can’t afford to play games—not right now, not when the stakes are so high for our economy.” He’s right. But unfortunately, he isn’t proposing the ideas needed to put American back to work.

Dancing Czars

http://dancingczars.wordpress.com/
“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert , in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.” ~ Milton Friedman
" Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts"~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan ~

Stop the Spending Now

Alison Acosta Fraser

March 4, 2010 at 12:00 pm

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Federal spending is out of control. Even President Obama knows it.  To really stop the madness, Reps. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Mike Pence (R-IN), and John Campbell (R-CA) have proposed a simple solution – a constitutional amendment capping federal spending at 20 percent of the economy. Their proposal puts the debate squarely where it should be: exploding federal spending and the size of government.  The authors of the amendment write that “Fiscal reform must begin and end with significant spending restraint.  If not – if spending continues unchecked – this generation will prove to be the first to mortgage the future of its children and grandchildren instead of leaving a better and more prosperous future”.  So true.  Congress has proved itself incapable of fixing the massive fiscal mess they created.  Now it must fix the legislative process and begin to propose real spending reforms.
Under the excesses that occurred under President Bush, the automatic explosion of entitlement spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security seemed a distant economic threat. But the recent spending binge has changed the game so that, when coupled with the remainder of President Obama’s stunning agenda, Washington is today building a bridge of debt to our  long-term entitlement meltdown.  This spending-driven debt is a symptom of the system allowing budget policy to go desperately wrong.
If lawmakers want to fix the problem, they must come to grips with the real causes of spiraling deficits and debt. As Brian Riedl explains, federal spending is climbing to rates not seen since the 1960s, and now exceeds $30,000 per household. While tax revenues are projected to remain close to the historical average of 18 percent of the economy, spending is rising dramatically over the historical average 20 percent of the economy to 24.7 percent in 2009.  Spending will reach 26 percent by the end of the decade and keep on climbing as the entitlement tsunami really kicks in. As Clinton would say, it’s the spending stupid.
By contrast, the balanced budget proposal from House Blue Dogs, introduced by Rep. Bobby Bright (D-Ala.), would take entitlement spending on Social Security and Disability off the table, actually creating a class of benefits  with special protection.  Regardless of whether that would stand the constitutional test or not, the simple fact is that entitlement spending is so huge, the budget cannot be controlled unless entitlements are reformed.  All of them.  And by focusing on the deficit only, the Blue Dog proposal would likely lead to punitive tax hikes.
As Pence, Hensarling and Campbell show, Congress must be forced to operate under tough controls rather than gimmicks that cannot be simply ignored, like PAYGO.  Policymakers cannot tout the need for fiscal restraint in one breath and vote for (or sign) colossal new spending – SCHIP, Stimulus, bailouts, a new health benefit, etc. – in another. Spending limits must force all federal programs – discretionary and entitlements, current and proposed – to compete against each other for tax dollars and Congress must set real priorities for the nation.
The Spending Limit Amendment would not solve all budget problems. To gain support the long-term fiscal situation must be made explicit – front and central in the annual budget decisions. Americans must be told that Social Security and Medicare’s excess costs are $44 trillion, or $184,000 for every man, woman, and child in the nation.
And it takes time for a constitutional amendment to become law.  Time we don’t have.  Their amendment should go hand in hand with other strong controls to make it workable.  Entitlements should not be allowed to grow on autopilot and crowd out other priorities, but should be put on real budgets like defense, anti-poverty programs and education are today.  Any savings must be captured and preserved to fix the fiscal mess – not to pay for expensive new benefits.
Congress must also get down to the business of serious budget reforms to rein in current spending.  Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) “Roadmap for America’s Future, 2.0.” lays out such a plan. It also shows the tough work Congress and the nation must do to derail the current spending trajectory along the lines envisioned by the Spending Limit Amendment.
These are the kind of steps necessary to protect the family budget from the federal budget.

Democrat assaults reporter.

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2011/08/the_shipp_hits_the_fan_john_wi.php
A democrat assaults a reporter, verbally threatens him, and it's ignored. This is a symptom of the problem in America generally and politics specifically, but what is the cause? Are the media ignoring it due to liberal bias? Are we so politically correct that a black man can't be accused of anything? Are voters really that ignorant? How can a "representative" get away with behavior like this? How can people not only allow him to stay in office, but actually vote against other candidates when Price displays such irrational, shifty, unprofessional, uneducated, illegal, childish, and simply wrong behavior? Representatives are human, and make errors, but shouldn't they at least be the best sort of people we can elect, and constantly strive to be better people?

DEMonic! Ann Coulter Explains How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0piOCbS9HQAnn Coulter Explains How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America.

Andrew Klavan's Economic Smackdown: Paul Ryan vs. Barack Obama

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr9pAsH-1Ao
The difference between a rational economic policy, and Obama's plan.

Fact checking.

http://www.boston.com/Boston/politicalintelligence/2011/08/fact-checking-the-gop-debaters/9fDJJOHMKyXQBcLhsAYC7H/index.html

Good start. Now prove you’re a real news agency and fact check Obama. Won’t happen will it?

Obama “vows” to come up with new ideas for jobs, but hasn’t.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/12/usa-economy-obama-idUSN1E77A23N20110812

I was amused by the irony there. Has Obama ever had a new idea? “Green” energy, no. Tax and spend, no. Massive deficit spending, no. Massive welfare state, no. Class warfare, no. Blame everyone else for the problem, no. Deny, deny, deny, no. Can anyone name one?

Pointless Politico ramblings

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61199.html

“Film to be featured in Rick Perry rollout created by an atheist” Oh my god! That means…. Hey isn’t the title of your article supposed to relate in some way to the article’s subject? Was there a point in there, somewhere, that I missed?

Obama’s gridlock.

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9P22I4O1.htm

So Obama spent the whole debt debate saying I’ve got no plan, you come up with a plan I like or I’ll veto it, and he blames anyone but himself for the gridlock in Washington? He’s done nothing but use scare tactics during and blame republicans since, and he thinks everyone else is partisan? As usual, Obama IS the problem.