(Paul Ryan outlines what has happened since the stimulus has been passed)
Will Rogers has a great quote that I love. He noted, “Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it’s not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago”(Paula McSpadden Love,The Will Rogers Book,(1972) p. 20.)
Senator Mark Pryor voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 which was signed into law by President Obama on February 17, 2009. Both Pryor and Obama thought the economy could be jump started by more government spending. On January 10, 2009 President Obama claimed that the Stimulus would bring unemployment under 8% and create 4.1 million jobs.
NOTICE TO LIBERALS: Did the economy get stimulated by the Stimulus Bill? The verdict came in with the unemployment figures. Unemployment had gone from 8.1% (Feb 2009) to 9.8% (Nov 2010). The stimulus had failed just like every other stimulus that had ever been attempted by any government anywhere.
It is my view that the stimulus bill did nothing to stimulate the economy. Also how can President Obama claim that economists on “the right” approve of the stimulus when not one Republican voted for it? In 2009 The Cato Institute ran an ad in leading newspapers through out the country that seems to contradict this very claim and had it signed by 300 leading economists (several Nobel Prize Winners included) : “Notwithstanding reports that all economists are now Keynesians and that we all support a big increase in the burden of government, we do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance. More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today. To improve the economy, policy makers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.”
Now that the Democrats have lost their large majorities we have an opportunity to duplicate the same political environment that existed the last three years of the Clinton presidency when we actually had three balanced budgets in his last three years (surplus of 69 billion in 98, 76 billion in 99, 46 billion in 2000). The Tea Party Republicans should help in that regard too. Futhermore, President Obama faces real problems with China who is balking at buying up American currency and Treasury bonds at the pace it takes to sustain the current deficit of 1.35 trillion.
Deep down President Obama really does believe that more government is the answer. Back in 1980 I read a book called FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and in it he said, “We’ve become increasing dependent on government. We’ve surrendered power to government, nobody has taken it from us. It’s our doing. The results, monumental government spending. Much of it wasted, little of it going to the people whom we would like to see helped. Burdensome taxes, high inflation, a welfare system under which neither those who receive help nor those who pay for it are satisfied. Trying to do good with other people’s money simply has not worked.” (The Free to Choose Film Series can be viewed at http://miltonfriedman.blogspot.com/ ).
I believe in returning social programs to private charities and churches where they would be privately funded. We can longer afford to allow government to interfere in our lives. Just imagine the expansion of private business and investment that will occur when our taxes are reduced dramatically because over half of our budget expenditures have been eliminated.
Politicians like Mark Pryor and President Obama need to realize that only jobs created by the private sector will stimulate the economy, and taking resources out of the private economy and putting them into temporary government jobs will only cause the debt to go up along with eventually our interest rates and inflation. Milton Friedman said it best: “There is no free lunch!!!”
The Daily Hatch 