Is Peter Orszag, Director, Office of Management & Budget on track or off track along with Congress?
http://www.charlierose.com/view/intervie…
Charlie Rose interviews some really smart folks sometimes. In this interview with Peter Orszag, Director, Office of management & Budget he asked some interesting questions and Peter’s answers tracked very closely with some things I have told others in the past. (1) The $700+B stimulus package is not designed by Congress to give our economy the kick in the butt it really needs to turn GDP or the economy around fast enough… Peter admits that to date only 28% of this has kicked in so far and a lot of that in tax cuts vs. employing folks and a lot going to state government propping up as well. (2) Even though GDP was dropping off faster at the end of last year it is still dropping off today as well. Kind of like a plane in a dive going down fast at first and then the pilot pulls back on the yoke and the plane is still falling but not at such a steep rate… hopefully it will level out and pull up before it smacks into the ground. (3) He admits Congress added a lot of pork in the bill. (4) He admits that what was really needed was more like $2 Trillion for an economy as large as ours, but Congress, even with all its spending methods, could not cook up that much pork fast enough. (5) He also said unemployement could be jammed up because people can’t sell homes and move to where the jobs might be easily enough… home sales jam things up in more ways that one.
So, why didn’t Congress simply use all that cash in a manner that would have unjammed things a lot faster… by BUYING HOUSES… which was suggested by more folks than just myself. Had Congress been able to think out of the box and looked at the real root cause… houses were not selling thus banks were not getting their loans paided off when folks lost jobs, they had to move or their income was not enough to let them make higher payments… when loans defaulted AIG had to cover bets they had no money to cover the bets with… Lehman folded when their fancy investments became poluted by foreclosed inventories… RE Agents lost income… banks went under… etc. The fix was to BUY HOUSES NOW, not stimulate the economy with a slow drip Recovery Act that is too little too late.
I suspect this so called Recovery Act will not really work in the long run and it will be up to us to recover the long, slow, hard way and in the mean time our country will tank and be up to its eye balls in debt for ages… which Peter Orszag also implied when he said that the vast majority of our debt was racked up by this plan and by all the tax cuts, etc… not the Iraq war… whcih i found quite interesting as well.
Agree or disagree?
We were lied to. The Stimulus Plan was to repay Obama and the Democrats political support. It was create government jobs for party loyalists, Czars, new cars and planes for liberal politicians. It was to give trillions to ACORN, ACLU and other anti-American community organizations.
All the liberals got what they wanted or their requirements are in the pipe line to be fulfilled.
The last people the liberals are looking out for are those are the people struggling to pay their taxes (as opposed to the politicians who failed to pay their taxes and were given a pass & raises or high paying jobs) and we the people who are living by the rules as we watch our taxes increase and barely getting by while we lose our jobs, our homes, our cars. But don’t worry – unless your unemployment runs out or you were self-employed or a small business owner – you can count on more taxes to cool and heat your home, a value added tax to everything you buy, you will be required the small pleasures in life like a soft drink or juice drink.
Oh, let us not forget, you may get health care at the discretion of the government, not your insurance or doctors advice.
This administration & liberal Congress is not attempting to better the lives of blacks, Hispanics or whites. They are just dragging all of us down to the lowest level while they enrich their own lives along with their contributors and lobbyists that they must repay at tax payer expense.
It’s only just begun. No matter how much the public opposes this band of crooks will shove their will down our throats.
We all need to wake up, wise up and, by our votes in 2010, get a CHANGE WE CAN REALLY BELIEVE IN AND TRUST.
