Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Are politicians stuck on stupid?

You have to come to that conclusion. Members of both parties are pretty much there. I've been hearing dumb things from both sides of the political spectrum, which convinces me we aren't going to get any fixes to our problems anytime soon.

Let's start with Obama, using a news article from Reuters:
At a fund-raising event for Democrats in Dallas, where Bush now lives, Obama said the former president's "disastrous" policies had driven the U.S. economy into the ground and turned budget surpluses into deficits.

Obama defended his repeated references to Bush's policies, saying they were necessary to remind Americans of the weak economy he inherited from Bush in January 2009.

"The policies that crashed the economy, that undercut the middle class, that mortgaged our future, do we really want to go back to that, or do we keep moving our country forward?" Obama said at another fund-raising event in Austin, referring to Bush's eight years as president.
Sorry, Mr. President. This tactic is not going to work anymore. Man-up. Our country has been moving forward? To what? And where? You must really think that the average American is a gun-toting, bible-thumping moron.

One thing interesting about this article is the reader comments. As of this writing, there were 311 comments. After scrolling through about half of them, I could see the consensus. The blaming-Bush tactic is backfiring. He is losing respect. The following comment is consistent with about 99 percent of the comments:
Whatever happened to being “Presidential”? The buck stops at the top and this president has been at the top for quite some time now. Enough is enough. It is time to buck up and take responsibility for policies that are not working.

You can easily find a lot of Democrats who are using this tactic, and it won't work.

But some on the Republican side are just as stupid. Pete Sessions on Meet the Press:
"We need to go back to the exact same agenda that is empowering the free enterprise system rather than diminishing it," said NRCC chairman Pete Sessions on "Meet the Press" Sunday morning.
Yea, that'll get you re-elected, you nincompoop. Just what everyone is hoping for, a return to the policies that got the Republicans fired from Congress in 2006.

What we need are some solutions, not rhetoric. All we seem to get is gab, gab, gab, and things keep getting worse, not better. Democrats have bad ideas which have never worked, and the Republicans don't have any new ideas. So we have, as Lewis Black put it, a party of bad ideas and a party of no ideas.

Maybe things would improve if we didn't allow lawyers to run for office.

6 comments:

Fam Guy said...

It is hard to argue the fact that the economy was crashing as Obama took office, after Bush had just written over $800 billion in checks to keep us afloat til he left town. Am not saying that Obama has done a good job, but he inherited a monumental mess that I don't think anyone could fix. Who knows how bad it would be if he would have just let it crash, but the more I think about it, that's probably what needs to happen. Sure haven't heard any good ideas for a 'fix' from the loyal opposition.

Steve said...

Are you talking about TARP? If so, then you need to do a little research. It seems this program will not cost us $700 billion (the original figure), but will be much smaller.

A quick search on google came up with this article from June:

The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) — the $700bn federal bailout of Wall Street firms and subsidization of Main Street mortgage modifications — is not only projected to cost less than original forecast, but recently passed a program milestone.

The volume of funds repaid into TARP from financial firms that received capital boosts now exceeds the volume of funds outstanding, the US Treasury Department said in its May report to Congress.

Treasury noted in the April update on TARP that it expects to spend less than $550bn of the $700bn authorized for the program, and expects to recover all but $117bn — an estimate that was subsequently revised to $105.4bn.

Of $384bn in total TARP disbursements, more than half — or $194bn — was repaid through May, leaving only $190bn outstanding. The sale of 1.5bn shares of Citigroup (C: 3.90 -2.50%) pushed the repayments past outstandings for the first time in TARP's history.

So to claim that Bush added $800 billion to the deficit is just simply not true.

Now, I could expect Congress to spend the money allocated to the program on something else...I wouldn't put it past them.

Fam Guy said...

I said Bush wrote over $800 billion in checks to keep us afloat til he left town. True or not? You conveniently ignored the entire gist of my message.

Steve said...

I did not ignore the gist of your message. But the statement that Bush wrote over $800 billion in checks before he left town is not correct.

According most sources, by Feb. 9, 2009, $296 billion had been used. That increased to about $384 billion during 2009, after Bush left town.

As of June of this year, according to the Treasury Dept, $194 billion had been repaid.

Congress authorized the Treasury up to $700 billion, but all of it was not used.

Where is the confusion here?

Fam Guy said...

It is hard to argue the fact that the economy was crashing as Obama took office. Am not saying that Obama has done a good job, but he inherited a monumental mess that I don't think anyone could fix. Who knows how bad it would be if he would have just let it crash, but the more I think about it, that's probably what needs to happen. Sure haven't heard any good ideas for a 'fix' from the loyal opposition.

Steve said...

Check out Paul Ryan, a a Republican congressman from Wisconsin. Some of his ideas may work. But you'd think the Republican National Committee would come out with a platform of ideas for reform, but all I've heard or read is more blah, blah, blah...which seems to afflict most of our politicians today.