When it comes to the economy, those in government would be
wise to follow a tenet of physicians -- first do no harm.
During the 1996 presidential campaign I asked a friend why
he planned to vote for Bill Clinton. He
said he liked what Clinton had done for the economy. I reminded him that when Clinton took office
the economy had already been in recovery for over half a year. I asked him what Clinton had done regarding
the economy that he liked so much. He
thought about it a bit and then said, "Well, he didn't really do anything. He just didn't mess things up."
I did not agree with
him about the specifics, but what he said did make a lot of sense and helped me
to understand why the President was so popular at the time. It didn't matter whether or not the state of
the economy was the result of anything Bill Clinton had done, or if it was in
spite of things he had done, the perception was that Clinton deserved credit
for the strength of the economy. When
things are going well, people are not likely to want to change course. After all, he hadn't done anything to terribly
"mess things up."
That is how conservatives often think of the economy - it
works better the less those in government try to "manage" it. There are fewer opportunities to mess things up
that way.
When Barack Obama took office the economy was suffering. He moved quickly to pass a $787 billion
supposed "stimulus" bill. The stated
intention was to jump start the economy with lots of spending on public
projects to prevent the unemployment rate from reaching 9 percent. Many of those projects were more about
congressional pork than employment though, and many of the jobs "created" are
temporary.
As columnist Cassy
Fiano noted, "since the stimulus package's passing, we've lost an average
of 16,000 jobs a day, and the unemployment rate has shot up to 9.8%, a
26-year-high. The budget deficit has quadrupled, and our public debt is
currently around $11 trillion."
We are also seeing the breakdown costs for the jobs
"created" through the stimulus plan.
Recent government figures show a
cost of $71,500 per job just based on the funds distributed so far. Other calculations show the cost per job even
higher. Even when basing the success of
the stimulus plan on the administration's own expectations, it comes up far
short. It is hard to imagine any measure
by which it could be considered anything but a miserable failure.
Since his election, we have seen month after month of job
losses and some are discussing the possibility of a second "stimulus"
plan. Just because the first plan has
(so far anyway) made the unemployment situation much worse, don't assume
politicians would be reluctant to make matters even worse yet. There are too many examples of politicians
doing just that in the past.
It is not unusual for politicians to enact failed policies,
then when it becomes evident they are failing, instead of changing course, to throw
more money into the same failed policy.
Remember the War on Poverty? How
about the failed approach to education for so many years? Instead of coming up with new and innovative
solutions to falling test scores and other problems in schools, the preferred
policy for many years was to throw more money at the same policies that failed
in the first place.
President Obama and Congress would do well to consider what
the current stimulus plan has done thus far and opt to do no further harm to
the economy. If I thought this
administration and congress could come up with a plan that contained actual
stimulus, especially in the form of tax cuts, that would be one thing. So far though, I have seen nothing to lead me
to believe they are capable of such, and as long as they continue to maintain
that what we are seeing now is success beyond Joe
Biden's wildest dreams, I am afraid of what much more of this "success"
would look like.
As noted earlier, when Bill Clinton took office the economy
was well into a recovery. In spite of
that fact, what was sold to voters as the "worst economy in 50 years" during
the campaign, became the "Clinton recovery" virtually overnight. Clinton declared it the case and those in
the media put their stamp of approval on the claim and convinced the country
that it was so.
The Obama administration appears intent on trying to spin
the stimulus plan as a success. So far
they are having trouble convincing even the Obama-friendly media, much less the
public at large. When people are out of
work, or fearing they may soon be, they tend to pay much closer attention to
the cause and effect of the state of the economy than they do when things are
coming up roses. If they are paying
close attention now, they are probably not going to be thrilled to hear talk of
Stimulus, the Sequel. Conservative or
not, people are realizing sometimes things don't turn out so well when the
government "messes" with the economy.
Lorie Byrd's Bio
Lorie Byrd is a stay-at-home mom from North Carolina with a passion for politics. She is a columnist for Townhall.com and a contributing editor to the Wizbang Blog.com .
Posted
10-22-2009 12:01 AM
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