Quote:
Originally Posted by Fast Gunn
As to what plan I'd like to see. It would be pretty much the opposite of what Bush did.
Here's an outline of my 8 point plan for the country:
1. Don't start unnecessary wars.
2. Don't give more tax cuts to the rich.
3. Invest in infrastructure.
4. Develop alternative energy sources.
5. Trim the bloated defense spending.
6. Invest in schools.
7. Calm the market.
8. Improve the economy.
. . . That's how you dig this country out of the economic hole Bush left us in.
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Looks like a nice little checklist of what are no doubt popular goals, but you might want to take a quick look at how things are working out.
Taking your listed items one by one:
I think we can all agree that we don't need to start any unnecessary wars.
You can be pretty sure that no one is going to give any further tax cuts to the rich. But are you aware that past tax cuts for the wealthy contributed to only a very small slice of our deficits? They pale in comparison to the tax cuts we've given the non-affluent over the last ten years, and to the amount of spending increases over the same period.
It would be nice if we actually had a plan to invest meaningfully in infrastructure development and maintenance, but we do not. Supporters of the $800 billion "stimulus package" claimed that we would, but of course political hacks in congress mostly just handed out the money to favored constituencies. So we got a lot of wasteful pork projects and the metaphorical equivalent of more "bridges to nowhere."
You may have noticed that the plan of "investing" in "clean energy" hasn't gone very well. Much of the money was funneled to politically well-connected companies. Crony capitalism at its best! And, of course, government doesn't always do very well when it tries to pick winners and losers. It sure picks a lot of losers.
It doesn't look like anyone is trying to do very much to trim defense spending. That was the case even in 2009-2010 when Democrats had large majorities in both the House and the Senate. Even Obama's Secretary of Defense, a long-time Democrat, pushed back hard at the specter of the imposition of cuts totalling a few percentage points of the defense budget.
Investing in schools should be the purview of states, local governments, and school districts, not the federal government.
"Calming the markets" should simply be taken to mean the avoidance of instability such as "fiscal cliff" standoffs, debt ceiling angst, etc. We'll see how that goes.
Regarding the goal of "improving the economy", you can see that that's not going very well. We're stuck in a slow growth rut, and will probably be in and out of recessions, sluggish growth periods, debt crises, etc. for many years to come. Those are the predictable consequences of rapid, massive, irresponsible increases in government spending. You'd better get used to them.
But notably omitted from your list is any mention of how you would like to see us achieve deficit reduction over the next few years. Do you think it's OK just to rely on massive borrowing and money-printing forever, and that proceeding without a plan is acceptable?
When you elect the two most fiscally irresponsible presidents in history back-to-back, that's what you get.
The recovery from balance sheet recessions arising from financial crises is, in any event, generally more difficult than that from normal "business cycle" recessions. But it certainly doesn't help matters to compound the problem by overloading the economy with anti-growth policies while it's trying to recover, and by completely failing to address the problems creating the crisis that precipitated the recession. (Dodd-Frank does more harm than good, and very little to lower the probablity of future financial crises.)
No one is even making a half-hearted attempt to fix the most serious economic concerns we face. The biggest surprise to me is that anyone is actually surprised by the poor performance of our economy
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