Politics
Out of context: Reply #16136
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Obama's drivel: Empty suit
OBAMA'S SPEECH: The simple math
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/…
President Barack Obama took to the ultimate bully pulpit Thursday night and delivered a concise lesson in the abject failures of liberal economics.Before a joint session of Congress, the president told us that government won't be the facilitator of jobs but rather their creator and commander, which long has been government's fatal conceit. One estimate pegs the cost of the new "stimulus" package at $450 billion with supposed future cuts to cover the cost.
Once again, Mr. Obama attempted to put the brightest spit shine -- "This is simple math," he said -- on the usual platitudes of "progressivism."
There's the latest grand design to create jobs by rebuilding America's public infrastructure. Never mind that spending on infrastructure, in absolute terms and as a percent of GDP, was, in 2008, the highest since 1981. Pay no attention to the crash behind the curtain of the same year.
An "infrastructure bank"? More government diktat-nomics, a sop to the nation's flailing labor unions, which, paid "prevailing wage," will shaft taxpayers even more by artificially inflating the projects' costs.
There's the plan to yet again extend unemployment benefits (a "policy" that only extends the term of unemployment) and another to throw more candy to states (that eat it by the bagful before breakfast, then complain of the stomachache).
There's the payroll (Social Security) tax cut extension for workers, which history shows (because of its recidivist temporary status), will be stashed, not spent, and won't "create" a single job.
Then there's the proposed companion tax credit, payroll and otherwise, for employers who create jobs. It's supposed to be a "demand stimulus." But as economist Donald J. Boudreaux notes, "Inflation-adjusted personal consumption expenditures in the U.S. today are higher than they were in the third quarter of 2007 (the quarter before the recession began).
"The problem isn't that consumers aren't spending; it's that businesses aren't investing ... because of Congress' and, especially, the administration's fetish for top-down, command-and-control, debt-financed 'governance' of the economy -- an enterprise-quashing recipe made only more poisonous by Mr. Obama's soak-the-rich speechifying."
Which he continued to do last night.
President Obama's proposals are nonstarters based on economic non sequiturs born out of political desperation. They are simply more interventionist lies to cover over the lies of the last failed government intervention. And that, tragically, is "the simple math" of Barack Obama's failed presidency.