I don’t envy Obama’s position either, but its like he’s doing the exact opposite of what’s needed to spur growth. Massive spending combined with huge tax increases on the growth engine are no recipe for a recovery … only a prolonged recession … like we are experiencing now. Taxing rich people even more never helped jobs either, their spending creates jobs, if you tax it away they will hunker down, they won’t invest and they won’t spend. Also, lest we forget .. Bush inherited a recession from Clinton, part of the Business cycle more than anything Clinton did .. then 9/11 happened a few months later. Bush did not inherit some great economy, but the underlying fundamentals were still strong (re: the banks hadn’t collapsed). The Bush tax cut helped get Business and money flowing, helped spur the creativity and genius of the American people, and create jobs. I’m not totally against spending plans like FDR’s, putting money in the Family Budget as you say makes sense to a point to cover the gap .. but this stimulus plan combined with the Fannie/Freddy/Bank and Auto bailouts seems beyond frivolous. We’re dumping money into a hole and the Stimulus money has barely made it out (like 6%). FDR’s recession lasted for some 12 years all the way through WW2, that’s hardly an economic policy that worked. Your GDP assertion during those years is kinda false .. if the Government prints/dumps money into the Economy GDP “technically” will rise yet few if any sustainable jobs are created. GDP doesn’t factor in the debt created by those “jobs”. The Military spending during WW2 inadvertently boosted Companies and fostered new industries after the War. Aviation is one example, it boomed after the War and created plenty of “real” jobs which have lasted to this day.

Bush tax cuts and economic policy didn’t cause this recession. Although Bush and Congress plus Federal Regulator’s asleep at the wheel can be blamed for their lack of oversight resulting in 30:1 leveraging and beyond, maniacal Credit Default Swaps, red-ink laced bloated budgets across all Government Entities, overblown Real Estate Deals to people who cannot afford it, crazy lines of credit to virtually anyone, etc. Greed, Ignorance and the Federal Enablers created this crisis.

I could go on and on forever. Tas: your first reaction is always to blame Bush and Republicans. They certainly did not help, but this situation goes beyond political blame gaming, it’s a rather sophisticated combination of things. Like a tsunami and an earthquake happening at once followed by a tornado.

In my view a tax cut would do more to create jobs and get the economy moving far better than any bloated, inefficient government stimulus plan which uses bureaucrats and government officials rather than market forces (Individuals) to determine where and how to spend.

That said, I’ve been screaming about the lack of job creation money on Obama’s stimulus about a week before he took office. He hasn’t done enough. I don’t think it’s accurate to say that Obama is following in FDR’s footsteps; or that following in FDR’s footsteps would be a bad thing. When FDR was in office and instituted job creation, the GDP grew by leaps and bounds — it was like China and India combined. But the economy was so far in the crapper that it almost didn’t matter. Unemployment was at 25% when FDR took office, that’s how bad the economy was during the Great Depression. Of course, the point of temporary government jobs like infrastructure repair is to keep greenbacks flowing to families and serve as an economic buoy so things don’t fall further. Eventually though, the banking and business sectors must work together to be our biggest economic engine. It’s the government’s job to buy time for both of these sectors to work their magic, so to speak.

The Obama administration has not done an adequate job of creating enough temporary jobs to buy the financial and business sectors’ time. Of course, at the same time Obama must contend with problems like health care which threaten to tank the economy in the future. It’s not a simple job — Obama is in one of the tougher positions any new president as had to face. I do not envy him, but one still must be critical of him. At the same, though, complaining about government spending isn’t a solution. For all the faults of Obama’s stimulus package, nobody on the other side of the fence has provided anything even remotely close to a reasonable solution to our economic woes.

Add on the Debt and Interest Payments from the Obama Debt, continued job “funding” via more stimulus, higher taxes, Global Warming Legislation and Health Care Legislation will stifle real jobs and growth in the Private Sector. It’s like hammering even more nails in the economic coffin.

Seems Obama wants US to fail ….