There was a chance that this week would mark a turning-point in an ever-deepening global slump, as Barack Obama produced the two main parts of his rescue plan. The first, and most argued-over, was a big fiscal boost. After a lot of bickering in Congress a final compromise stimulus bill, worth $789 billion, seemed to have been agreed on February 11th; it should be only days away from becoming law. The second, and more important, part of the rescue was team Obama’s scheme for fixing the financial mess, laid out in a speech on February 10th by Tim Geithner, the treasury secretary.
America cannot rescue the world economy alone. But this double offensive by its biggest economy could potentially have broken the spiral of uncertainty and gloom that is gripping investors, producers and consumers across the globe.
Alas, that opportunity was squandered. Mr Obama ceded control of the stimulus to the fractious congressional Democrats, allowing a plan that should have had broad support from both parties to become a divisive partisan battle. More serious still was Mr Geithner’s financial-rescue blueprint which, though touted as a bold departure from the incrementalism and uncertainty that had plagued the Bush administration’s Wall Street fixes, in fact looked depressingly like his predecessors’ efforts: timid, incomplete and short on detail. Despite talk of trillion-dollar sums, stockmarkets tumbled. Far from boosting confidence, Mr Obama seems at sea.
Congressional Republicans did exactly the right thing. They could vote for the program, or against it. It may succeed, or it may fail. If they vote for it, and it succeeds, Democrats will get all the credit. If they vote for it and it fails, blame will be shared, giving Dems political cover.
If they vote against it and it succeeds … Democrats will get all the credit. If they vote against it and it fails, Republicans can say they warned us all.
The even larger issue is that of why Obama allowed congressional Democrats to run away with ‘his’ bill. Either he’s incompetent … [i]or[/i] he’s in idealogical agreement but wants political cover in case it fails, or makes things even worse.
I think that the American people do not understand the legislative process and federal funding. Obama played on this or is ignorant. The President purposes a budget ( none was given by the President in this case). Congress gets the budget and the House comes up with a spending bill and the Senate comes up with a spending bill. After the bills are passed they go into conferance and are rectified and sent to the President for his signature. President Obama PROMISED the American people this bill would be gone through line by line. It was a promise he couldn’t keep and didn’t care to keep because he couldn’t. Same with the PROMISE of no lobyests in the White House staff.
I wonder if the President understands the legislative process. He called for a massive spending bill, turned the details over to the Congressional leadership nearly entirely, and campaigned for rapid passage without scrutiny. And now [url=http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/16/obama-seeking-to-ease-limits-on-executive-salaries/]news reports say[/url] that Obama doesn’t like some of the provisions in the bill and wants them changed. It’s too late. His choices now are to sign the bill and enforce its provisions, which is his job, or veto it.