Some People Have a Strange Definition of 'Stimulus'

Posted by Bobby Eberle
July 13, 2009 at 7:07 am

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When someone's heart rhythm is out of whack, what do medical personnel do to get it back on the beat? Do they massage it for twenty to thirty minutes? Do they talk to it, trying to coax it back to beat normally? No. They zap it. In other words, they provide it with a "stimulus" that is designed for one purpose: get the heart beating properly... now!

This concept seems to be foreign to Barack Obama and the Democrats. During the last recession when the country was gripped with not only an economic downturn but a massive terrorist attack, President Bush moved to cut taxes and inject money back into the system... money spent by the taxpayers in the manner they saw fit. It worked. Now, we have nearly a trillion dollars in big-government spending, and it's not doing the job. What do Obama and the Democrats think about it? They think another "stimulus" might be in order. Are they crazy???

In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Obama wrote about the need for patience as he and the Democrats work to "fix" the economy.

Of course, he starts the column by noting, "Nearly six months ago, my administration took office amid the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression." It seems to be that this is the worst economic situation since the last time we had a Democrat in office who didn't know what he was doing (Jimmy Carter).

The swift and aggressive action we took in those first few months has helped pull our financial system and our economy back from the brink. We took steps to restart lending to families and businesses, stabilize our major financial institutions, and help homeowners stay in their homes and pay their mortgages. We also passed the most sweeping economic recovery plan in our nation's history.

Where to begin? First, Obama said that because of his nearly trillion dollar spending plan, unemployment would not top 8 percent. Now, it is nearly 10 percent. People keep losing jobs. In addition, a true stimulus is made to get things going NOW. The vast majority of the funds approved by Congress have not even been spent, and when they are, it will be toward a laundry list of liberal programs designed to take money from productive Americans and give it to others.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was not expected to restore the economy to full health on its own but to provide the boost necessary to stop the free fall. So far, it has done that. It was, from the start, a two-year program, and it will steadily save and create jobs as it ramps up over this summer and fall. We must let it work the way it's supposed to, with the understanding that in any recession, unemployment tends to recover more slowly than other measures of economic activity.

Question... Had the federal government done nothing, where would the country be now? Next question... What if the federal government passed a bill the size of the stimulus but directed toward cutting taxes? What do you think that would do to hiring and to spending by the American people? Isn't that what a stimulus is all about?

I am confident that the United States of America will weather this economic storm. But once we clear away the wreckage, the real question is what we will build in its place. Even as we rescue this economy from a full-blown crisis, I have insisted that we must rebuild it better than before. For if we do not seize this moment to confront the weaknesses that have plagued our economy for decades, we will consign ourselves and our children to future crises, sluggish growth, or both.

Rebuild it better than before? Let's see... right now, in order to pay for the government-run health care plan that Obama is proposing, the Democrats want to raise taxes even higher. First, they will let the Bush tax cuts expire. This will not only push the top rate from 35% to nearly 40%, but it will push other rates higher as well. Then, the Democrats want to put a surtax on top of the tax rate. This will effectively put the top rate somewhere around 43-45%. Thus, the people that America counts on to expand business and hire people will be paying almost half of their income in taxes to the federal government. How is that supposed to help in hiring?

Obama talks about the "jobs of the future." Clearly those must all be government jobs, because the private sector will be taxed into oblivion in order to pay the increasing costs of government. Americans deserve to keep what they make and spend it how they see fit. The more that is spent by the private sector means that more goods will need to be produced and more services will be rendered. This means manufacturing. This means jobs.