Washington D.C. seems to be obsessed with the idea of stimulating the economy. On the surface, this seems like a noble idea – our economy is in the tank right now, and the sooner we get it moving in the right direction, the better. Unfortunately, looking to Washington to fix our economy is rather like asking some thug that smashed your car window and stole your CDs to repair the car and give it a nice detailing. And putting Congress in charge of writing a bill to allocate funds for economic stimulus is not too different from putting the foxes in charge of the hen house and expecting the hens to thrive and egg production to rise.
Um…no. Don’t think so.
Here’s the deal. When you find yourself in a hole, the best thing to do is to STOP DIGGING. When you’re in a financial hole, the best thing to do is to STOP SPENDING. (Duh!) The Democrats, led by The Chosen One, want to try and spend our way out of the recession. Those that do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. This, campers, was tried once before. It’s no accident that Obama is being compared to FDR, and his “stimulus package” compared to the New Deal. Interestingly, the New Deal didn’t work either. What got the countryout of the Great Depression was…drumroll please…World War II. Trouble is, Obama got elected on a platform of ending the war – not expanding it.
The best way to send a recession is to stop spending money. If the Feds really want to end the recession, there’s an easy way to do it. Cut taxes. Problem is, government is remarkably ill-equipped to execute this kind of passive, “first do no harm” kind of strategy. Why? Because they don’t make a dime off it. You have to understand that the M.O.C. crowd (Members Of Congress) like power. Power flows from money – the power of the purse, if you will. Wanna make a friend (and get reelected?)…allocate tax dollars to someone’s pet project. Telling some well-heeled supporter that you’re going to cut funding to their pet project in the name of fiscal responsibility is not a way to endear an influential suppporter to your reelection campaign. Congress loves to dole out pork. They positively HATE cutting program funding, because inevitably, somebody’s ox is gonna get Gore’d. (No pun intended. Really.)
It’s something akin to job security. If you tell your constituents, “the way to solve your problems is for us to do less, with less of your money,” it won’t be long before the Great Unwashed and Huddled Masses will yearn to be free of Congress – and start asking exactly what they are getting for their money. That’s dangerous waters for Congress – and a direct blow to their ultimate goal – the acquisition and consolidation of power.
So since we can do little about Congress and their free-spending ways, let’s take a little side trip over to Fantasy Land, and consider what might be the result of a “stimulus plan” that didn’t allocate a dime, but instead cut taxes AND spending.
First of all, everybody would end up with more in the pay envelope every month. Everybody that works for a living, that is. Everybody’s taxes would go down. Contrary to what the Dems would have us all believe, that’s a good thing. Poor people don’t create jobs and hire people. Rich people do. Cut everybody’s taxes, and everybody has more money. That’s a happy thing. Put more money in people’s wallets and they will spend it – maybe not on luxury items, but they will spend it – on necessities. Consequently, you’ll see this spending stimulate the economy, with people buying more groceries, more clothing, more stuff. This would do a lot more good, and a lot sooner, than any kind of midnight basketball/infrastructure repair/mosaic handball court for the overpriviledged projects than are in the current bill.
Trouble is, the wrong guys are in charge in D.C. You see, the Republicans stopped acting like conservatives, funding every project they could think of. With the G.O.P. acting like a bunch of spendthrift sailors on shore leave, the Democrats (incredibly enough) started looking like the party of fiscal responsibility. Do you realize the extent to which the Republicans had to screw up in order to make the Democrats look good? But screw up they did, and now the party of FDR and Slick Willie is in charge. I predict you’ll see a lot of spending bills in the next few years – and not a lot of fiscal responsibility. That’s a problem. Not just for the rich, either. It’s a problem for everyone. But the voters have spoken. And ultimately, we will all the the government we deserve. Even if it kills us.
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