Not many politicians will stand up and take the heat from problems they create. But it sure seems funny (not real) that the right wing talking heads have seemed to have created blame for the jobless rate and high deficit on Obama.
As I have said for more than 20 years, there is nothing a President can do to effect the economy in anything short of 18 months, good or bad. This means that for the first 18 months, you will be seeing the results of previous President and Congress (who has control of the spending anyway). There is one exception to the rule and George Bush Jr did it twice. that is give out checks to the public directly. This takes only 8 to 10 months to be realized in the economy but in his situation, the money was borrowed, we have to service the debt, we have to pay it back sometime and the problem with his hand-outs in this day and age is that because we make and sell less goods that are made here in the U.S., it will not revolve enough though our economy to be taxed to make it a worthwhile venture as it just ends up in the hands of the folks that lent it to us in the first place. Remember the song “16 tons”. If not look it up in Wikipedia.
So now when you hear all the current problems are Obamas’ fault, ask your self just what did he do exactly to bring us to this point.
If you say the bank bail-out, remember that it was previous administrations and Congress that told the old rulebook and threw it out the window and allowed the banks to get so big without the mean old government red-tape in the way. Those rules that had been removed were from a similar problem in 1908 (see Wikipedia “bankers panic of 1908”) and The bailout started with previous admin and Congress but did not have time to spend it all. Either way it is money they borrowed and you have to service the debit till paid back. Lets not forget the money spent on a unpopular war that was removed from the budget figures. That means the deficts that looked bad in the previous administration was really much worse as the money spent just was not counted until Obama came to office.
If you will say the stimulus package, you have not yet seen the effects of that as over 60% of the money has not yet been spent. When it is spent, it will create things we will use (need them or not) and kick-start the need for material goods for construction like steel, concrete and those workers spend money on things (its called trickle down economics so I do not know what the republicans are bitch’n about) and it is all taxed each step of the way thereby paying for itself. When a construction worker is working, he is paying taxes and not being a burden on the system of standby help we all pay for.
Now if you wish to blame Obama anyway, Please Wait Till Mid-Summer 2010 when you effectively can. By that time if you do not start seeing results, he will own the plight of the nation even if congress has more to do with the spending. However, he asked for it and got 80% of what he wanted. They call it checks and balances. It is hard for one to imagine just how bad things were/are and could yet be. Nobody in the government is going to scare you into not spending your money as that keeps the economy moving. Just keep in mind that even if McCain were elected, ho too would be facing the same music.
I do not wish to give blind faith to any President but it does take that 18 month period to know if he is effective and one should always question if we need anything but I sure wish we did more of that in the last 12 years.
Even so, I am just glad the economy was not a disaster as it could have easily have been. Who do you want to give credit for that, the last administration and Congress?
The Moot Moral:
Don’t drop any eggs while saving a life.