Does the White House Understand the Economic Crisis?
Posted by Michael A. Kamperman on April 21, 2009
It seems as though no coherent message is coming from the administration as to what to do about the economy. The latest word from the Whitehouse is President Obama has asked his cabinet to identify $100 million in budget cuts. The media and talk radio are having a field day deriding the paltry sum of $100 million in budget cuts when the country is facing a $1.75 trillion budget deficit in 2009. The comparison being thrown around is this amounts to a family that spends $60,000 per year looking for ways to cut $6 from their annual budget. It’s as though the administration is like Dr. Evil and having awoken from a time warp still thinks millions is real money in Washington.
My concern is that President Obama and his advisors are sending a mixed message, the decidedly wrong message, when they talk about cutting $100 million from the budget. The whole purpose of the stimulus program was to use $786 billion in deficit spending to support a sinking economy. The economy has gotten much worse since President Obama and the Congress passed the stimulus package. So why is the President sending out a message that working towards a balanced budget is moving up his list of priorities? The stimulus bill is already too small and too much of it is spent in 2010 rather than 2009.
There is a place for fiscal responsibility and for balancing the budget, paying down debts, and putting a little money aside for a rainy day. But we are in the middle of a Cat 5 economic hurricane. Does the Whitehouse not get this? I’m left to question if the administration has a thorough understanding of the economic crisis we face and the enormity of the challenge of restoring the economy to health. If the administration does understand the depths of the crisis then the ploy of offering $100 million in budget cuts is nothing more than throwing a bone to its political critics. If this is the case, then one wonders if the political will exists in Washington to make the bold steps necessary to fix the economy. If the political will is not in the Whitehouse, then where is it? It’s certainly not in the Congress. President Obama needs an advisor to tell him that FDR hit the ground running with his famous first 100 days of activity in the middle of the Great Depression in 1933. If President Obama doesn’t step up the economic rescue, and fast, then he will more likely go down in history being compared to our other President that served during the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover.
