Off a cliff! Armageddon! Darker, Darkest! Mortal Danger!
President Obama and top Democrats on Capitol Hill are deploying these and other stark predictions of doom and gloom to push through their economic-stimulus package. In terms not heard in Washington since the late 1970s under President Jimmy Carter’s watch, the new president has sought to terrify Americans into supporting the $800 billion-plus bailout bill.
*update: calls into legislators offices pro and con the stimulus bill are running 100’s to 1 AGAINST. Numbers not seen since the Amnesty Bill. KEEP IT UP AMERICA!!
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Remember when George W Bush and Dick Cheney tried to warn the nation about the downturn, then several months in progress, when they came into office in 2001.
What was that the Press said then? OH YEAH, HEY HE’S TALKING DOWN THE ECONOMY!
This is hope over fear. This is the bipartisan spirit, a bill that can’t claim a single Republican vote. Hm.
We are propping up failures because it will buy Democrats votes. It is more compassionate to do for the losers. The people who played by the rules, saved for a rainy day, exercised some restraint, or planned for the downturn are paying for it. This is irresponsible. There is nothing stimulating about this bill.
Seven years after the Great Deal, unemployment was still 15%. There is NO time in history where government spending has equaled economic stimulation.
“*Terry Crowley is printing this article under Art Pedroza today. His account is temporarily inaccessible.”
You got my hopes up Terry – I was thinking that Art had finally come to his senses. Rats!
Good post though.
“This is the bipartisan spirit, a bill that can’t claim a single Republican vote.
Bipartisanship is not giving them everything that they want. Obama met with the republicans at the white house on three separate occasions. Also, party line republican votes accounted for the opposition, which was all political calculation anyway. Reid needs to actually force the filibuster by the Reeps, who will look like the obstructionist sphincters they are, or simply change the rules and end the filibuster. Otherwise the Reeps will essentially run this country into the ground (further) by crippling the economy through filibuster.
Second, the New Deal lowered unemployment from 25% to 15%, and raised the GDP continuously year after year. Further, the wheels slowed in jobs production in 1937 only after FDR cut some New Deal programs, yielding to republican pressures. Regardless, FDR, through the new deal, took GDP which had been devastated, and raised it far above the production level peaks which were reached before the 1929 crash. That IS economic stimulation and job creation, Good Sir, from government spending .
Terry, again, your talking points are short and misleading on facts, and long on disproven ideologies. I know you are better than this, so I will keep writing, for now.
“Remember when George W Bush and Dick Cheney tried to warn the nation about the downturn, then several months in progress, when they came into office in 2001.”
No, I remember them saying nothing is wrong, giving trillions in tax breaks to the ultra rich and corporations, and presiding in a doubling of the national debt and the greatest growth in deficit spending, all at the same time.
Where do they sell that Kool-Ade, Terry?
Terry, Bush entered his recession with a surplus and an economy that had added 22 million jobs in the previous 8 years, Obama inherits a trillion dollar deficit and Bush’s anemic job growth, around 3.5 million jobs were added under Bush,( that didn’t even keep up with population growth, you need at least 1 million a year for that) pile that on top of the banking and housing crisis and we ARE looking at gloom and doom.
For something truly terrifying check out the Daily Kos; U.S. 3 hours away from economic and political collapse September 08
Apparently Hank Paulson threatened Martial Law if the 700 billion bailout wasn’t passed. And we’re not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot.