Stimulus Overload

Sorry for the politics/stimulus overload. This thing is a pretty big deal and it really seems to me that there are a lot of reasons to be annoyed with this package, and the President's handling of these issues. I was having a hard time in stats following my professor so of course being at a computer I just started reading. I came across an article on Real Clear Politics that I wish I could locate now, but the author was talking about how pleased he was with Obama and how things have gone so far for him. He was touting the stimulus package, and...I found it. Go here. The craziest part isn't where he says Obama delivers a knock-out to the GOP arguments against his package, but in the last couple of paragraphs:

Still, it was a relief to hear such a coherent, powerful case for the public sector coming from the Oval Office.

We didn’t hear this from George W., or from Bill (“The era of big government is over”) Clinton, or from George Sr., or from Ronald (“The government isn’t the solution. The government is the problem”) Reagan or from Jimmy Carter, whose Fed chairman, Paul Volcker, intentionally engineered a severe recession. Why is Volcker a senior adviser to Obama again? Nor did we hear it from Jerry Ford. His idea of public support for the economy was manufacturing “Whip Inflation Now” buttons. You have to go back to that great liberal, Richard Nixon, to find a President who believed in priming the pump. Thirty-eight years ago, he said, “We’re all Keynesians now.”

It’s been a long time for that wisdom to return to the White House.

Crazy, right? Wait...so the golden age was under the leadership of Richard Nixon? Really? Because I'm pretty sure the '70s were not the paradise he might think it was.

I can't believe anyone would ever say that Reagan's term in office was anything but an enormous success, even just looking at it strictly economically. The country went through a period of unparalleled prosperity...in all of human history. Reagan's economy created 19 million jobs. The economic expansion occurred at a rate never before seen. Paul Volcker did orchestrate the conditions under which that severe recession occurred in the early 1980s, but that was because of stagflation. The economy was weak, and inflation was out of control, so he backed the dollar which came at the expense of the economy, although it was only temporarily. Obviously, because then the US annual GDP exploded from that point.

I think this post over on the Corner at NRO is pretty interesting. It gives a list of notable people opposing the stimulus package. That post points out that many of the president's own economic advisors had been critical in the past of the philosophical underpinnings of the package. Most tellingly, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office advised that the stimulus plan may actually hinder long-term economic growth. I can't seem to find that particular report, but here is another detailing some related issues. Here is a key excerpt:

Because of the bill's divided focus, its stimulative effects may prove too weak to halt or reverse more than a fraction of the job losses predicted for the next two years. And the investments, while relatively modest, may produce enough sticker shock to weaken support for the larger efforts the administration wants to mount in areas such as health care, energy, the environment, and infrastructure. It may prove difficult to turn off the spigot of "temporary" spending in 2011, as states and localities will still be struggling to recover from severe unemployment and steep revenue losses. If so, the consequence will be a permanently higher baseline budget at the very moment that the administration will want to pivot toward long-term restraint. The president may discover that once missed, a chance to invest in reform may be hard to reproduce--an ironic twist on his chief of staff's instantly famous dictum linking crisis and opportunity.

I wonder if those words will be prophetic in the next few years.

This isn't about the stimulus, but I thought it was really interesting. It's about the housing crisis and the efforts that Bush, Greenspan, and McCain had made to try and secure more federal oversight for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

If you haven't heard the name Barney Frank before, you should be aware. I'm pretty sure the guy is evil incarnate. He opposes everything that's good for this country.