Obama: A new New Deal? (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
What Obama will spend
So much for “pay as you go” budgeting in Washington, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. “Democrats ran on ‘paygo’ in 2006,” promising to offset spending increases with spending cuts elsewhere, or tax hikes. Now, “with the recession as an excuse for just about anything,” Democrats are promising President-elect Barack Obama they won’t tie his hands with anything as annoying as fiscal responsibility.
Voters just gave Obama permission to move away from conservative policies, said E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post, the same way they gave Ronald Reagan the OK to abandon liberal strategies. So, like Reagan, Obama should “not be afraid to be audacious” as he pushes for health care, energy, tax reform, and education policies to help the middle class.
Obama says the nation needs another stimulus package now, said Amity Shlaes in the New York Post. Call it a “pre-Christmas bonus.” That, along with all the Democrats’ talk of spending on roads, bridges, and other infrastructure, sounds like Obama has in mind a modern version of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The trouble is, “the economy never quite recovered” under Roosevelt.
Right, so Obama has to be more bold than FDR, said Paul Krugman in The New York Times. The New Deal had long-range success—bank-deposit insurance and Social Security have insulated Americans from financial hardship for decades. But Roosevelt's public works spending was an “inadequate response to the Great Depression.” If Obama hopes to deliver an economic recovery, he should “err on the side of too much stimulus” rather than too little.
Comment on this article
Recent comments | 22 total
How on earth can the WSJ be lecturing Democrats in the wake of "conservative" Dubya's 8-year record deficit spending spree??? Unbelievable...
Voters did not give Obama permission to move away from conservative policies. Obama won the election acting like a conservative, pushing his tax cuts that of course he will have to back out of if he wants to implement half of his far left policies. Simple economics shows that FDR didn't get us out of the Depression, his policies prolonged it, it was WW II that helped the economy recover. LESS gov't involvement is the only way out.
Those who forget (or ignore) history are doomed to repeat it. God help our children and grandchildren who will inherit the bills for BO's administration. BO's spending will make President Bush's spending look like nickels and dimes.
It's time to give up the labels and start doing what it correct, regardless of which party claims ownership of a given idea at the moment. We need balance, not rigid ideology, which is what created this mess in the first place. By the way, FDRs policies help us to get out of the Depression, and the foolish idea of less government always being better is a big part of the current American and the global economic meltdown. I know that the conservatives will still talk trash about any non-republican no matter what they do or how well they do, so the rest of us need to ignore their elitist extremism and do what is balanced and right, in spite of what the fear-mongers say.
jesica-just using the oxymorn 'simple economics' leads me to take anything else you say seriously.
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