A Trillion Here, a Trillion There…

I recall that during the campaign my wife and I would hear Barack Obama speak and then look at each other and say “Sounds great. How will we pay for it?”

Now, with an $825 billion dollar stimulus package on the table in the wake of a $700 billion bank bailout I am concerned. The people who were decrying the cost of the Iraq war being passed on to our children are silent about these expenditures. Why? Because it was never about fiscal responsibility, it was about politics. Why is Obama so eager to emulate Roosevelt, who presided over two terms of a depression? Roosevelt didn’t end the depression, World War 2 did. An argument can be made that he lengthened, not ended, the economic issues of that era.

Reagan inherited a terrible economy. Inflation, unemployment, interest rates and national morale were all deplorable. He didn’t make the government the solution, he got the government out of the way. 2 1/2 years later it really was morning in America again. Reagan presided over deficits but nothing like we are about to undertake.

Obama was elected because he ran a better campaign. And if he is successful I’ll be the first to admit it. But if I had my druthers I’d rather have RR in charge. Obama’s rhetoric sounds like the Great Leap Forward, which was a disaster. Let the markets fix the country. If you want to be a trust busting , more regulatory government I’d support it because it was corruption, and not capitalism, that failed us. For that I blame Bush, no doubt. Horrible oversight. But we ought not throw the baby out with the bath water.

We should not be fooled into thinking that the cyclical nature of free markets and recessions that come with them are a failture of capitalism and decide that more socializtion is the way to go. That is fool’s gold.

If deficits are crippling because of a war, how can they not be crippling from wholesale socialization?