via Obama Continues Stimulus Push.
(another right-slanted AP piece)
WASHINGTON — With the Senate moving toward a tenuous compromise on the White House’s economic stimulus plan, President Barack Obama hammered at the urgent need to pass a bill that will jump-start the struggling economy and put people back to work.
“Americans across this country are struggling, and they are watching to see if we’re equal to the task before us. Let’s show them that we are. And let’s do whatever it takes to keep the promise of America alive in our time,” Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address.
(snip)
Republicans characterized Obama’s rhetoric as arrogant.
“Democrats have controlled both branches of government for less than a month. And you have to wonder if all that power has gone to their heads,” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said in the GOP’s weekly address. “For the last two weeks, they’ve been trying to force a massive spending bill through Congress under the guise of economic relief.”
Massive spending IS economic relief, crap-for-brains. Since the lack of demand is sending jobs out the door, resulting in more loss of demand, then government has to step in and create demand and that means massive spending. It’s like they did back when the dairy industry was going tits-up from unfair trade practices by Reagan. The government had to buy up all that cheese. Remember? (If you had to go to the food bank back then as some of us did, you found out what the government did with all that cheese.)
(snip)
“Now, if most Republicans were convinced that this would work, there might be a greater willingness to support it,” Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said. “But all the historical evidence suggests that it’s highly unlikely to work. And so, you have to balance the likelihood of success versus the crushing debt that we’re levying on the backs of our children, our grandchildren, and, yes, their children.”
President Ronald Reagan
See, that’s the whole ball of wax. Republicans aren’t convinced that spending will work because they still have their heads in 1982. They think Ronald Reagan cut taxes and it worked. As Reagan himself soon realized, tax cuts were not creating revenue as he had promised. But he told the public that tax cuts worked anyway, and debt didn’t matter, then RAISED taxes every year after that until his second term finished. He was just another lying Republican politician who would piss on your back then tell you it’s raining.
But the Repugs are betting all-in that spending won’t work and tax cuts will, which is really risky, and really wrong. Historical evidence actually suggests that spending WILL stimulate, directly contradicting Sen. Mitch McConnell. And if it does, which in all likelihood it will, then the Repugs are in for more losses in 2010 by betting the bank on the wrong idea. Balancing the likelihood of success versus more debt is pure fantasy suggesting their way will succeed and cause no debt, and the Democrats way will fail and cause more debt than we or our offspring can handle. Contrarily, debt is the understood price we have to pay for all this – Bush’s f-up. Even if the stim was 100% tax cuts, the debt ensued from this catastrophe would be the same as if it were 100% spending. Both actions, although opposites, effect the treasury the same way by reducing cash on hand. The big difference is that tax cuts as a stimulus just aren’t as effective as spending.
Let me interject this here at the end just to prove a point about what history has to say about spending. I hear the Repugs argue that FDR’s spending did less to bring us out of the depression than World War II, and the truth is we did have a recession in 1937. They credit the war as providing the real stimulus. But what was it exactly about the war that caused so much prosperity and job creation? The answer is massive government spending on war stuff.
The author called this article “Obama Continues Stimulus Push”, but it should have been called, “Republicans still Beating Dead Horse”. (You’ll never get that side of the story from the AP.)
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