Academic

Is President Obama "Post-Partisan?"

By Calvin Massey

  It's been a shade less than two weeks that President Obama has held the office , but the President's approach to the "Stimulus Bill" may be instructive.  A legion of respected economists have agreed that the bill is larded with programs that will not be an immediate stimulant to the economy, but which represent social welfare spending that Democrats wish to enact.   Moreover, this social welfare spending is completely stripped of any provision for funding of these programs.  The naive expectation of congressional Democrats is that the world will happily lend us another trillion dollars to fund these programs.  If the Democrats are correct, we simply become even further indebted to people who are not our best friends; if the Democrats are wrong we simply print a trillion or so greenbacks and watch inflation soar to Carteresque (perhaps Weimarian?) levels, even while unemployment remains at 10%.  If we are going to make this spending gamble, shouldn't we at least use the money for pure stimulus?  Some Republicans have suggested that we enact the pure stimulus parts of the bill and debate at leisure the non-stimulus portions.  President Obama did nothing to check House Democrats' rush to enact the omnibus package, and while he suggests a willingness to tinker with the Senate version, there is no apparent desire to compromise on most of the non-stimulus social welfare spending.  That doesn't sound "post-partisan" to me. 

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on February 02, 2009 (boomark / email).