Republicans Call Obama Stimulus Plan a Complete Failure Try Telling That Lie To Montana
Let’s examine conservative economic policy from the eyes of a typical American peasant middle class working person. That would be me. What follows is some conservative thinking on the effects of the stimulus plan from one David Limbaugh. I find his thinking to be offensive and erroneous, not to mention very damaging to my prospects of economic recovery:
(http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=125515).
“With the nation in near panic over the impending doom of the economy, Obama presented his now-infamous “stimulus plan” to artificially create government demand by spending more than $800 billion of borrowed money to “jump-start the economy.””
Before I allow Limbaugh to attack said stimulus plan, I need to point out that if President Bush initiated this plan back in September 2008, five months before the plan was voted on by Congress, he may have been able to put a floor under the descent of the economic crash. But like the emperor Nero, he preferred to play the songs of his dreamed up accomplishments during his good bye legacy tour while the country was ablaze in flames. Please continue David:
“Being a die-hard Keynesian, Obama probably believed his program would create jobs. But given his attitude about the wealthy being undeserving of their good fortune, he probably wasn’t risking too much in the event it didn’t work.”
Stimulus spending is a very inefficient job creation mechanism at best. Obama had to keep the number of millions headed for joblessness below great depression levels. He managed to accomplish that as an emergency measure. There is no question about this. Wall Street bankers or “the wealthy” as you prefer to call them, are sure as hell undeserving of their good fortune. I’m not the only one who believes this either.
“The funds would redistribute wealth to those less fortunate and whom society, in Obama’s view, has cheated.”
Society wasn’t the cheat here. It was Wall Street. They risked the stability of the country and everyone in it in pursuit of higher returns in riskier investments. To put it another way, they gambled with depositor’s money and lost. Yeah, they should give it back, or redistribute it back if you insist on categorizing it that way, but again, I am a peasant, and in my world thieves need to be held accountable even if that means giving back the stolen loot.
“By every reasonable measure, his stimulus plan has been an abject failure. When you examine the empirical evidence, you’ll find there is an inverse relationship between the monies he spent and employment; as more money was spent, there was less employment.”
Mr. Limbaugh, you should be slapped in the face for writing this nonsense. The more the government spends the more people are unemployed? I know that at least a few people got a job in Montana from this stimulus funded project:
$8.5 Million for Road Construction in Montana
A Billings, MT, company has been awarded the largest of three road construction projects in the Shiloh Road corridor.
http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx
Back to Limbaugh:
“Obama now claims he saved some 2 million jobs that would not have been saved but for his stimulus package. But as Heritage Foundation scholars note, he bases his numbers not on any evidence whatsoever, but on the preposterously circular argument that Keynesian theory holds that these government expenditures must have created that number of jobs.”
What about the jobs in Montana? They’re real.
“For 70 years, liberals have been spinning the yarn that FDR’s New Deal… – quickened our economic recovery. …an even better howler – that FDR was actually a conservative, because if he hadn’t implemented his socialist programs, the republic would have died right there.”
I can’t say that it quickened the recovery, but it kept people alive until the recovery came. And yes, the republic was in danger. There was a socialist movement that was gaining a lot of support among the starving unemployed masses. Socialist candidates got a lot of voter support during those desperate times. Would the republic have survived if nothing had been done? There is a lot of history to suggest it is an open question.
And since you brought it up, do you think the republic could have survived if Obama vetoed the stimulus and did nothing causing a second great depression? Given the anger in this country right now I think that is also an open question.
Let me be clear about one thing. I am a peasant who can’t afford to have this republican foolishness taken seriously. I will always support and defend emergency programs to help working class Americans during times of severe economic distress. It’s about time republicans support workers rather than corporations that send our jobs overseas. Stop trying to convince me that a job stimulus program is bad for me.
What is bad for me is conservatives like you who sit on their hands and do nothing while average people suffer. You wouldn’t throw a drowning peasant a life preserver considering it one less mouth to feed. I’m not on your side dude and I will always oppose you. That is why you will never succeed should your side get re-elected. Us peasants are not going to go away and we won’t go down without a fight.
