Is Obama Stimulating Failure?
Image via Flickr by Rachael Dickson.
More news about Obama’s stimulus package is constantly leaking out from the President-elect’s associates. The more news I get, the more I wonder, where exactly is this change I was promised?
Obama’s plan to build the economy is conventional, at best. The economy continues to fall and it sees unlikely that Obama’s plan could do half the job, or even a third. Forty percent of the Obama plan consists of tax cuts, which our current president, George W. Bush, proved to be spectacularly unsuccessful. Rumor has it that Obama even plans to let Bush’s tax cuts stand until their expiration. Talk about going back on your campaign promises quickly.
Despite warning us that without his stimulus plan, the country will be in dire peril, Democrats have pulled back from the original date they planned to push the package through, slipping the date to mid-February.
Included in the plan are tax credits for hiring employees or possibly for those they don’t fire. Yeah, look back on that. We’re going to try and give people money for not firing someone you intended to fire. If I’m having trouble explaining it here, I hate to think of the IRS auditor who has to try and figure out how “to administer a rebate based on intentions.”
Other ideas are far less original, and their past incarnations have not been successful. The only thing truly different about this stimulus plan is its scope.
Which brings us to the next issue. That huge national deficit that Obama warned us about. Now, I’m all for keeping the US economy afloat, but even China doesn’t want to buy our debt now. How well is the economy going to do if the federal government goes broke?
Finally, not to flog a dead horse here, but there is still TARP to allocate, with another $350 billion dollars that, if approved, can be used on the whim of the Treasury Secretary. If it isn’t approved all that money we spent to keep GM afloat will go to waste, as without the final part of the automaker’s money, GM is guaranteed to go bankrupt. If it is approved, we face the possibility of more taxpayer money going to those who are likely to waste it.
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Of course, the future of TARP lies in the hands of Timothy Geithner. When it comes to the Obama administration’s promises of saving the US economy, his choice of Geithner as the Treasury Secretary is a frightening one. Geithner is already facing flack from Congress over his role as a ‘leading architect’ of the no-oversight bailouts of Bear Sterns, AIG, and Citigroup.
That’s right, Geithner is, in many ways, responsible for the first disastrous $350 billion. Now Obama plans to put him in charge of the next $350 billion. Does anyone else see a problem with this?
In yesterday’s speech, right here at George Mason University, Obama said “The very fact that this crisis is largely of our own making means that it is not beyond our ability to solve.”
That may be true, but why does it feel like Obama plans to continue making problems, not solving them?
