As we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
Nelson Mandela
Obama's Economic Policy: Banging His Head on the Wall
Obama is like a rookie boxer whom has a habit of dropping his hands. His handler trains him to keep his gloves up. But he gets hit, and all the training goes out the window.
Most of us recognize, simply from an interpersonal perspective, what is going on here: it's a case of a man clearly in over his head. He's frustrated, because he really drank the Kool-Aid: he truly believed that the stimulus act along with the health care bill would jumpstart the economy, and the numbers aren't there. He's left trying to argue the unknowable (but unlikely) that without the stimulus and his other policies, we would have had a second Great Depression. Less than two-thirds of a $787-860B stimulus spent over the past 16 months or so in a $14.5T economy? Yeah, right...
So Obama defensively acts like most people in over their heads--despite almost unprecedented majorities, nearly filibuster-proof, he wants to point fingers--at a barely functioning opposition or at his predecessor, President Bush. You know, Mr. Obama, we were in a recession months before you won the nomination. You had every opportunity then to walk away from the job if you didn't want the responsibility. You ran for years against Bush; the time to stop talking about Bush was when you won the election.
Obama wants you to know that between vacations and Iraq, he hasn't had the time to pay attention to the economy, but it is the top of his "to do" list now. Now what he do.... Hmmm, let's me think. He has influence over taxing, spending, and regulatory policies. He has administrative oversight over the government services.
But Obama is facing some major obstacles: at sub-50% approval ratings, Obama had limited leverage over some of his legislative Democratic allies fighting for their political life. The last thing Democrats in red or purple districts and states need is another huge spending bill to vote on before the election. It would be almost certainly be blocked in the Senate--and with the public worried about the escalating national debt, the Republicans would be given a gift heading down the home stretch.
There have been rumors about Obama waiting for a lame duck session to pass a controversial tax-and-spend agenda; if so, it seems that Obama hasn't learned from the fact he lost many independents over the unpopular spending and the health care votes. It's highly unlikely that the Congress, particularly the GOP finding itself with a stronger hand next year, would respond to an expected resounding rebuke of the President's policies this fall by going along with it. Obama knows that; I suspect if he tries it, it's part of his 2012 reelection strategy of running a progressive populist campaign against the Republicans in Congress. (Obama still hasn't come to the terms with the fact that his popularity has more to do with his personal style, not his political ideology, and if and when he runs for reelection, he's no longer a fresh face but part of the stalemate.)
I'm not a political consultant to the GOP, but I would pick my battles very carefully; remember what happened to Bush when he started his second term with a bold reform for the sacred cow of social security. Chances are any majorities will be slender, and the GOP needs to avoid a reoccurrence of the Gingrich-Clinton budget debacle. They need to establish credibility and a record different from earlier Congresses, focus on economic issues and select their issues carefully. For instance, Obama would find it very difficult if the GOP decided to revoke the highly unpopular individual mandate for health care insurance, because he himself ran on that. They might also be able to build on educational choice.
Going further on the issue of jobs in general: one thing is clear: businesses are sitting on a huge pile of resources. A lot of that has to do with an activist Congress vastly expanding counter-productive regulatory schemes (despite material evidence of existing regulatory failures), worker benefit mandates or penalties, end-of-year tax hikes on job creators and investors, free trade barriers, globally uncompetitive tax brackets, etc.
But let's deal with Obama's obsession with this straw man of "failed economic policies" (after all, it's not like that Bush inherited a stock market meltdown, a recession, 9/11, and the financial scandals..., much of which can clearly be traced back to situations not addressed by Obama's beloved government bureaucrats and experts in the Clinton Administration). It's not exactly clear to me what exactly these scapegoat Bush policies Obama is talking about: I suspect he's talking about Bush tax cuts--including for people whom have paid the most taxes--or reckless, unsubstantiated allegations of regulatory neglect. He has also made dubious zero-sum references to the wars with domestic spending, even though domestic spending rose significantly under Bush.
Gerald Seib had a recent Wall Street Journal column entitled "It Isn't Just Lost Jobs—It's the Lost Jobs Machine." He takes a more long-term approach, citing three differing perspectives: progressive Dean Baker, centrist Robert Shapiro, and conservative Holtz-Eakin. Baker essentially wants a weak dollar to bail out the manufacturing sector. Of course, liberals always want a cheaper dollar--it lowers the cost of past debt. There are problems with this approach, of course; it raises the costs of various raw materials and other products imported--including the vast majority of our oil & gas imports and lowers the living standard. I think in part liberals are not looking at the salient productivity measures involving our manufacturing base; we can't and shouldn't try to compete on the basis of cheap labor commodity costs. In the early years of the republic, many had analogous concerns in our shift from an agrarian-based economy: where were all the farmers going to find jobs?
Mr. Shapiro does have a good insight into the problems that Obama attempts to link to Bush policies: the fact of a tough global economic climate. American companies are finding it harder to pass along price hikes (covering the costs of robust wage growth). He believes that government has to help businesses control 3 major cost factors: energy, pensions, and health care. I will simply point out that government policies have actually worsened these cost factors for business, and the answer is not more of the same. I won't go into a long discussion here, but for example, I think the government should subsidize catastrophic health care, but should stay out of the micromanagement of regular health care.
It probably doesn't take a genius to realize a conservative like myself would prefer Douglas Holtz-Eakin, whom wants a laser-beam focus on pro-economic growth policies, to stop the madness of bundling social policy with business operations (recall that health insurance became a benefit during the WWII years to get around wage and price controls, which no true conservative supports), and to deal with a dysfunctional educational system which does not provide businesses with the kind of knowledge and skills needed in a competitive global economy.
Dr. Eric Wargotz (R-MD) for US Senate
In a recent post, I expressed frustration that Republicans were not presenting Senator Mikulski (D-MD) with viable competition in her reelection bid this fall. But Dr. Wargotz, a Queen Anne's County Commissioner, who refers to himself as an independent Republican, has positions largely consistent with my own. Maryland deserves more balanced representation than the current knee-jerk Kool-Aid drinking progressives in Congress. Ms. Mikulski is yet another career politician out of touch with mainstream America. I find the following commercial spoofing "political insidersaurus" amusing; it has also apparently aired on Fox News Channel.
The Political Insidersaurus from Wargotz for Senate on Vimeo.
Political Humor
"President Obama said that too many Americans are struggling to find jobs. You know what these Americans are going to be called? Democrats." –Jay Leno
[Jay, why wait for the election to throw these bums out of office? How about early retirement? I would be willing to pay each of these tax-and-spend Democrats a severance package. It would be a lot cheaper than having these fools on the Hill continue to fritter away our grandchildren's future...]
An original...
- Barack Obama has to choose his words very carefully around Joe Biden. The last time Obama asked Biden if he wanted to take a leak before the next meeting, Biden publicly disclosed the top secret location of the bunker meant to house the Vice President in the event of a crisis.
Lee Wiley, "It's Only a Paper Moon"
