Stumped
In anticipation for Obama’s press conference last night to stump for his stimulus package, I wondered if the media would be as hard on him as they were on Bush. No only with the questions they asked, but also by the performance. The prepared part of the press conference highlighted Obama’s oratory skills. However, during Q&A session, he was as bad, if not worse, than Bush – long pauses, stumbling over words, and then the rambling when he went into law-professor mode. Besides his poor performance, the thing that stood out was his attempt to misinform or downright lie to us.
First, he laid the blame for the current economic crisis in the lap of the “greedy banks” when in fact it was the government who forced the banks to give out bad loans and buy up the toxic debt. Next, he countered the claim that FDR’s New Deal actually made matters worse, when most experts now agree that many of his policies extended the Great Depression.
I’m not saying we should do nothing, but I believe that his cure is worse than our disease. I’d rather see the feds and even the states temporarily (permenantly!) cut taxes for both corporations and individuals. It would be nice if they cut some spending as well, but I’m not going to hold my breath. If we’re going to go further in debt, we might as well give everyone a break instead of just the sectors with the best lobbyists.
Which brings us to his biggest lie of the night – the stimulus package doesn’t contain earmarks or pork. Who does he think he’s kidding? How can anyone buy that? I’m stumped.
UPDATE: Hot Air is also stumped:
That’s pork, no matter what Obama calls it. The stimulus package contains nothing but porky, wasteful spending, most of which has little chance of creating jobs within the first year, when jobs will be most needed. Obama even sells it like pork. If it looks like a pig, acts like a pig, gets sold as a pig, and stinks of pork, it’s not difficult to identify it.
I also found it interesting that he referenced our situation to what Japan went through in the 90’s. And he said that because they did nothing they had no economic growth for 10 years. I grant you that is a long time to have to watch spending, but how did they come out of it? Was the government able to cut down their deficit during that time?
If his predecessor left him with $3 trillion debt, how is adding almost another trillion going to help?
And I agree – the whole package smells of pork.
Japan is still in an economic funk. What’s doubly ironic is that Japan tried the government-based stimulation approach and it didn’t work. In fact, the only effect it had was to lengthen the crisis, just as it did in the Great Depression.