First, I don’t believe it will work.
Historically, simply throwing government money at a struggling economy hasn’t created growth. It certainly didn’t in Japan during the 1990s, when the Japanese government initiated no fewer than 10 stimulus packages over eight years. Instead of fortifying the economy, government intervention led to what is often referred to as “the lost decade,” a time when Japan’s unemployment rate more than doubled.
Supporters of the current plan like to point to the New Deal as a model, declaring that FDR’s massive government expenditures dragged this country out of the Great Depression. But the data points just don’t back that up. The Depression kicked off with the stock market crash of 1929. Ten years and billions of taxpayer dollars later, unemployment was stuck at 20 percent.
You don’t have to believe me. Believe Henry Morganthau, President Roosevelt’s own treasury secretary, who said the following: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work…. I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started…. And an enormous debt to boot!”
This brings us to a second point: the debilitating cost of this package.
Palin/Sanford in ’12, I say….
Where was the good governor when members of his own party controlled the Presidency and the Congress? Another politico weighs in – and really has nothing substantive to add to what has already been said. Why didn’t he run for his party’s nomination if he had such bright ideas?
Whether Sanford ran or not has no bearing on whether he is right here, and he is. The $800 billion boondoggle (which will surely blossom to $3+ trillion once the additional program funding is made permanent in the coming years) is designed to cement in political control of the federal government by the statist Left. It has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with erecting an American version of Mussolini’s Italian Corporate State.
It did work in Japan. The problem is that they didn’t stimulate the economy enough until 1998.
So, will Gov. Sanford stand by his principle and thus refuse to accept any of the money for his state?
Even the CBO says the stimulus package would not work and will only push the nation even further into debt. In fact, they say the economy would fix itself faster without the legislation.
RE: “So, will Gov. Sanford stand by his principle and thus refuse to accept any of the money for his state?”
He will stand by his principle — vigorously and publicly opposing the stimulus package — while accepting what the Federal government does under the rule of law, and I assume accepting anything he deems appropriate.
At least — that’s what I’d assume he’d do, based on his past stellar example of integrity and consistency.
Yes indeed Roosevelt tried to buy us out of the depression of the late 20’s-and all of the 30’s. But history will record that it took WWII to really get us moving along. May God forbid that another WW (WWIII) is used for bailout.
[blockquote]It did work in Japan. The problem is that they didn’t stimulate the economy enough until 1998. [/blockquote]
Uh, no it did not. “Stimulus” spending in Japan peaked long before 1998 and all it did is leave the country with a massive public debt. What finally broke the doldrums was finally letting the “zombie” companies die off, thus stemming the flow of capital into them.
One point that Gov. Sanford did not make in an otherwise excellent
piece is that all this spending by Bush and Obama will lead to the
rounds of inflation/recession that we experienced in the 1970’s
after Johnson’s guns and butter policy of the 1960’s.
The stimulus, [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGafMHsV4Ug&feature=email]explained in full[/url].