Go ahead…breath a sigh of relief. The 787 billion dollar stimulus package that most of us had thought did seemingly nothing for the economy, was, as it turns out, a great success. Vice President Joe Biden was in New Hampshire recently telling us so.
A valuable asset to the President, if for no other reason than his willingness to go out with a straight face and continue to insist that we are in the throes of the “Summer of Recovery”, Biden is as likeable a guy as one could ever meet.
But let’s face it…”recovery”? Maybe the rest of us simply misunderstood the meaning here. This could be nothing more than a case of misconstrued semantics. We were thinking they meant “recovery” as in…something returning to normal, or, something that is “on the mend”…getting better…you know…recovering. Maybe, though, what they really meant was “recovery” as in retrieving the hull of a great sunken ship, the USS Economy, from the depths of the Marianna Trench, or recovering the pieces of a once-majestic aircraft that got flown into the side of a mountain.
To be fair, this administration had their hands full when they took over the helm, but every conceivable error has been made since. As Charles Krauthammer pointed out some time ago, Obama sees his job as plowing through legislation from the liberal handbook. A massive overhaul of the healthcare system, that just weeks after it was passed, was determined to have been built on some flawed math and indeed was going to come with a hefty price tag. As Nancy Pelosi reminded us…”you have to pass it to know what’s in it…”. Thanks for the sage advice. Being President is much more than herding legislation through the narrows, it is about leadership. This administration is lost at sea, with no bearing, and no understanding that the overwhelming majority of the citizens of this country want, more than anything, for the spending to stop.
During Biden’s trip to New Hampshire he visited a home that was being weatherized under a federal program meant to save energy costs. He boasted how this particular home would save up to $600.00 a year on energy costs and how much that money must mean to “a single Mom raising two kids”. Sure, fair enough. But the increased tax burden to that same mom eats into that, doesn’t it? I mean…the federal program uses money collected from workers and businesses. With fewer and fewer workers, and fewer and fewer businesses, doesn’t that mean that inevitably and eventually the bill for all of this federal spending will be paid by the average worker?
How does one strut through town heralding the great recovery while unemployment continues to rise, foreclosures and bankruptcies continue to rise, and the financial future of more and more people seems more and more tenuous? The way one does that is with a blind allegiance to a person or philosophy. With a willingness to simply ignore facts and warning signs in favor of unflappable optimism based on nothing. Historically, people like this have been dangerous.
At the end of the day none of it is a surprise to sensible people. A child knows you can’t fix a debt problem with borrowed money. That’s what the stimulus package was. The money evanesced into thin air. Nobody even knows where most of it went. We know it didn’t work, though. All the talk of the efforts to help small businesses expand and “hire workers” is nonsense. Small businesses need more business to hire more workers, not a handout from the government. It is a circular infinity of borrowing and spending that leads nowhere. It leaves me wondering how long before the government introduces the “Recovery from the Recovery Stimulus Package”.