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January 31, 2009 05:45 PM UTC

Obama helps lobbyists create a mess that won't stimulate the economy

  • 13 Comments
  • by: Another skeptic

The NY Times’ David Brooks shows how Larry Summers’ guidelines for economic stimulus have been discarded in favor of a lobbyist-driven mess.

Link is here.

Udall and Bennet must take notice and help slow the train to economic depression.

Brooks’ key points:

But they’ve created a sprawling, undisciplined smorgasbord, which has spun off a series of unintended consequences. First, by trying to do everything all it once, the bill does nothing well. The money spent on long-term domestic programs means there may not be enough to jolt the economy now (about $290 billion in spending is pushed off into 2011 and later). The money spent on stimulus, meanwhile, means there’s not enough to truly reform domestic programs like health technology, schools and infrastructure. The measure mostly pumps more money into old arrangements.

Second, by pumping so much money through government programs, the bill unleashes a tidal wave on state governments. A governor with a few-hundred-million-dollar shortfall will suddenly have to administer an additional $4 billion or $5 billion. That money will be corrosive both when washing in, and when it disappears in a few years time.

Third, the muddle assures ideological confrontation. A stimulus package was always going to be controversial, because economists differ widely about whether or how a stimulus can work. But this bill also permanently alters the role of the federal government, thus guaranteeing a polarizing brawl at the very start of the Obama presidency.

Fourth, Summers’s warnings about deficits have been put aside. There is no fiscal exit strategy. Instead, permanent spending commitments are entailed with no permanent funding stream to pay for them.

Fifth, new government expenditures on complex matters are being designed on a hasty, reckless timetable. As readers may know, the policy I am most passionate about is pre-K education. Yet I fervently hope that the Head Start expansion is dropped from this bill. A slapdash and shambolic expansion could discredit the whole idea.

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13 thoughts on “Obama helps lobbyists create a mess that won’t stimulate the economy”

    1. Typical Frank Rich and typical NYT.

      1. Pelosi and Obama didn’t listen to GOP ideas.

      2. Comparing 2009 to post 9/11 2001 is a false analogy. Today, nobody knows what will work; in 2001, everyone with any common sense believed the world’s intelligence agencies’ warnings that Iraq had or had the ability to quickly arm itself with WMDs.

      3. It takes a real lightweight liberal to defend Pelosi’s pork.

      4. Obama was one of the most left wing members of the senate, and he’s being consistent. No surprise.

      5. Obama’s setting himself up for years of criticism, because he’s letting Pelosi cram him down to her level of mediocrity.

      The real issue: Why is Obama working so hard to scare the world and send us into a long depression? Is it because he knows that when he can call “crisis,” he and his lackies can shut up critics and rule like fascist dictators?

      1. Tom Friedman wisely warns that there is no “pill” for what ails us. And he cries that there is little trust in the banks and institutions we have trusted most of our lives.

        Until the last few graphs, Friedman makes a lot of sense.

        Then he goes off the deep end and shows how he and some of the other gullible folks at Davos are letting themselves be Madoffed by Obama.

        Too good to be true. Beware.

      2. Insightful opinionjournal.com colum is here:

        http://online.wsj.com/article/…

        The party-line vote in favor of the stimulus package could have been more, could have produced not only a more promising bill but marked the beginning of something new, not a postpartisan era (there will never be such a thing and never should be; the parties exist to fight through great political questions) but a more bipartisan one forced by crisis and marked by-well, let’s call it seriousness.

        President Obama could have made big history here. Instead he just got a win. It’s a missed opportunity.

        It’s a win because of the obvious headline: Nine days after inauguration, the new president achieves a major Congressional victory, House passage of an economic stimulus bill by a vote of 244-188. It wasn’t even close. This is major.

        But do you know anyone, Democrat or Republican, dancing in the street over this? You don’t. Because most everyone knows it isn’t a good bill, and knows that its failure to receive a single Republican vote, not one, suggests the old battle lines are hardening. Back to the Crips versus the Bloods. Not very inspiring.

        The president will enjoy short-term gain. In the great circle of power, to win you have to look like a winner, and to look like a winner you have to win. He did and does. But for the long term, the president made a mistake by not forcing the creation of a bill Republicans could or should have supported.

  3. You’re in the extreme minority of Americans who want Obama to fail, right? You, Limbaugh, and the fringe right seem to be blocking any and all attempts of adding ANY good ideas to rebuilding America. YOU are the Party of NO.

    Good luck with that,

    1. convinced yet that you don’t like Pres. Obama?  Did you make it down to the Quickie Mart to get the materials for you AFDB yet?  Just checking in on you, man(?), I’m worried about your ….health.

    2. Only the uneducated and power hungry greedy few want the state to run our country, because governments don’t run things well.

      But there are the totalitarian socialists who think they will run the government that runs the nation under socialism. What the don’t realize is that the same people who are smart enough to run private enterprises also are smart enough to rise to the top of socialist governments.

      Therefore, the losers supporting socialism will be losers under socialism. They won’t make the cut.

      And the freeloaders supporting socialism don’t realize that in socialistic societies, freeloaders still get the smallest and least desirable pieces of the pie.

      Not all losers are socialists, but most socialists are losers.

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