Posted by
Philip Mella on Wednesday, July 08, 2009 3:10:25 PM
Although it's fascinating to watch as Democrats argue about the wisdom of a second 'stimulus' package, the fact that economists, political analysts, and, of course politicians, disagree, should create a kind of electoral panic. If you had two x-rays taken and one showed a serious fracture and the other didn't, what would you conclude? Well, that's the quandary we're in, largely because there's so little evidence that the 'stimulus' money spent thus far has produced any measureable results.
Driven to political distraction by the spike in unemployment to 9.5 percent, the party of bleeding hearts is at a loss for how to respond. Should they increase the deficit more by funding another package or should they wait and hope that as more dollars are dispersed unemployment will abate? It's that kind of obtuse dichotomy that puts the left in the unenviable position of 'damned if they do, damned if they don't.' That's because deficit spending to revive a moribund economy has never worked--ever.
The most reliable way to resuscitate a languishing economy is to reduce the cost of doing business--that is, reduce marginal tax rates, the corporate income tax, and capital gains taxes. However, that effectively requires the liberals to relinquish power, when their obvious goal is to expand their stranglehold on our lives through expansion of government programs that modify behavior and prescribe outcomes. Freedom, when dolled out in a miserly fashion based on a monarchical model of selective worth, is anathema to the common good because it creates preferred classes of people, the preordained or deserving. That's not how our Founding Fathers contemplated life in America, and when you include their racial spoils system--the cynical creation of arch liberals--it's a system guaranteed to fail.
Writing in Politico, Victoria McGrane demonstrates the political futility the Dems find themselves in, and it not only highlights their myopic strategy and reflects the disarray of their ranks, it's further evidence of the low wattage thinking they're bringing to the problem. Senator Diane Feinstein says that since Congress has already infused trillions into the economy she's "not sure there's any magic thing" it can do now "other than what we've done before." What planet do these people inhabit?
When unemployment increases they seem blindly focused on a government solution. In Rhode Island, where unemployment is 12 percent, both senators are convinced that it's too soon to "rule out" another stimulus. It's no different than a junkie in the thralls of addiction who can see only one solution to his misery, despite the fact that more of the same has only kept him in his self-styled prison.
You see, when people are suffering, quite regardless of the cause, severity, or ability to extricate themselves on their own, liberals feel compelled to 'help,' with no less intensity and instinct than a moth is drawn to light. So, Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, fervently believes we need another jolt, "probably a lot bigger than the last one...It's horrible that you have all of these people suffering because you have people in Washington with rocks in their head." Without the proper context you might have thought he was referring to the Iranians.
You may have heard Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell's homespun advice about a second blast of deficit dollars: "Down home, we used to say there's no education in the second kick of a mule." Well, based on the remarkable resilience of the left's belief in deficit spending, we're in for a multitude of mule kicks.