President-elect Barack Obama and liberal members of Congress are gearing up this week to make their case for an economic stimulus bill that costs upwards of $775 billion. Obama has said he wants to secure as many as 80 votes in the Senate in hopes of striking a bipartisan deal.
Unfortunately, most of the talk so far about the stimulus has focused on failed economic policies. Some of them even resemble the approach of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s when the United States was mired in the Great Depression.
The Heritage Foundation is committed to sound economic policies that revive the economy and help America prosper. Our policy analysts have deep concerns about the approach Obama and congressional liberals are pursuing. That’s why we’re unveiling a new resource called Rapid Response.
The idea is to create a one-stop place on our website with all of our work on the economic stimulus. We’ve identified the research papers, related commentaries, new blog posts and videos that make the case for a proposal that helps the economy reach a sustained, higher level of growth.
We’re calling the new page Rapid Response in anticipation of the many battles Heritage and our conservative allies will be fighting on Capitol Hill this year. The economic stimulus will be the first of many policy disputes, so you’ll be seeing us roll out similar Rapid Response pages on other issues in the weeks and months to come. We hope you find it helpful. We welcome your comments and feedback.
Where was your rapid response to Bush’s already-tried and already-failed economic policies? Puhleease. You guys need to go back and revisit what you think “sound economic policies” really are.
Your Rapid Response concept is most welcome. This way, as I do my work, I can immediately access what I need to back up or supplement my arguments to the public.
hey NIKKI , Was it BUSH who got us in this housing mess ,NO . It was BARNEY FRANK and his inappropriate behavior . Was it bush who got us into this ENERGY CRISIS , no it was that traitor NANCY PELOSI and her enviro-thugs . come on NIKKI , put the blame on the right(or in this case left)people .
Question:Were Bush’s economic measures really tried or mutilated by liberals (in both Parties) until they were guted of many essentials before being implemented?
Nikki; It’s a shame you cant look at things objectively. It’s become painfully obvious that Congress had sold their principles, if they ever had any, for left politics. Both parties spent themselves crazy. Mark is right about Barney Frank and Mr. Dodd. They should both be prosecuted along with all the other crooks that took part in the Wall Street mess and the Sub-Prime banking failure. No more bail-out, no stimulus packages. It’s time everyone took responsibility for their actions. I can’t wait to take full advantage of this “Rapid Response” approach. Working with the Change.gov Web was a total failure.
Let's face it – we're now dealing with the repercussions of many poor and, frankly, illegal deals and decisions made by members of both parties over the past 10-15 years. Pointing fingers at this point is, well, pointless.
Bravo to the Heritage Foundation for getting this type of information out there and easily accessible for the average American. Our country needs things like this that allow people to become quickly informed about our political goings-on.
As admittedly complex as our economy is, there is one simple truth to our current woes — it was the advent of an Obama presidency (coupled with a
Democrat congressional "monopoly") which seriously began to seem possible about
18-24 months ago. (Evidence of this is that 18-24 months ago, the Dow was at an
all-time high, unemployment was at a near all-time low, interest rates were very
low, and there were little signs of any inflation. Though certainly not perfect,
everything was quite good, particularly the values of nearly everyone's biggest
asset and nest egg (i.e., their homes), and overall confidence going forward was
generally positive.)
It's very hard for me to believe that the adverse effects of this change to the
new Democrat "backdrop" is not more fully comprehended and vociferously espoused by more in-the-know people. The more this is kept from being made "front and center", the more the Democrats will have, once again, gotten away with something.
Our economy is massive, yet, at the same time, very fragile. Markets don't like uncertainty. They also find their own "equilibriums" by taking into account all sorts of intrinsic and extrinsic factors. One of those factors (in fact, THE most important one) is the philosophical environment within which they must operate. When the markets began to sense a shift from our long-standing
capitalistic paradigm to one which might become more proportionally socialistic, those "equilibrums" were upset, and the markets began to unravel. After the sub-prime mortgage housing crisis started it all, a ripple-effect began which became pervasive across all the other inter-connected financial markets. (It's my belief that the Democrats "tipped over that first domino" as their "October surprise" to win the elections and gain carte blanche powers because they foresaw a "perfect storm" and the rarified possibility of an ultra-liberal "trifecta" with the presidency, house, and senate. This was too good for them to leave to chance. The genesis of this MUST be investigated and exposed.)
Our markets will not come back (although there will be episodic bounces from time to time) until our philosophical environment shifts back to becoming higher proportionally capitalistic relative to where it is currently perceived to be
headed. This is because our markets are currently where they are SUPPOSED TO BE because they have found their correct "equilibriums" given this new, perceived philosophical "backdrop".
Realistically, only when this Democrat philosophy actually fails, and people actually COMPREHEND its failure, will our economy rebound. This will require an ouster of the stalwart Democrats and a return to a Republican/Conservative bias in the next elections because it is unrealistic to think the Democrats will ever admit to the failure of their philosophical beliefs. Their egos and hubris are much too large for that to ever occur. They would rather "go down with the ship". We can all only hope that our country has not been irreversibly harmed in the interim.
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