What a great read. What a crappy President. Enjoy.
By Matt Vespa
When we all heard his speeches during the 2008 campaign, it was something akin to the Lesley Gore’s Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows. He promised more transparency and a return of civility in politics. He was everything George Bush wasn’t, which provided the hot air that led him to the presidency. Bush did run deficits and the orgy of spending and corruption scandals that plagued Republicans in 2006, that were not forgotten in 2008, allowed Democrats to control the narrative on a key Republican issue: Taxes and Spending. The “tax and spend label” that usually sinks liberal candidates, or at least makes the race a competition, faded away. Obama vowed to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term and that was music to the ears of independent voters sick of Dubya. However, when the ballots closed that miserable day in November, Barack Obama rode that wave of “hope and change” into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on a flawlessly executed campaign that ushered in our first black president. However, after a $800 billion dollar stimulus, a trillion dollar new entitlement program, stagnant economic growth, a volatile job market, and high unemployment, the banner of hope and change is looking more like a Kafka-esque nightmare. We’ve all transformed into beetles.
As for the so-called “stimulus,” we should thank the president. He finally and irrevocably proved that government spending doesn’t spur economic growth and, therefore, killed the cornerstone of Keynesian economics. We’ve had eleven recessions and recoveries in the past sixty years and, as Harvey Golub wrote in the Wall Street Journal yesterday:
This recovery is near the bottom of all 11. Cumulative nonfarm job growth is just 1.9% 34 months into recovery, the ninth-worst performance and well below the average job growth of 6.5%. Cumulative GDP growth is just 6.8% 11 quarters into this recovery, less than half the average (15.2%) and the worst of all 11…fiscal policy, under the control of the president and his party, increased expenditures by about $700 billion per year since 2008 and launched a spending package of about $800 billion (along with various “targeted” temporary tax reductions), all of which resulted in an increase in national debt of over $5 trillion. In other words, we borrowed $5 trillion, for which we will pay interest for who knows how long, in order to stimulate the economy now.
via Barack Obama and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Presidency.
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