President Obama’s Health Care Press Conference Leaves Economy Twisting in the Wind

Posted by Michael A. Kamperman on July 22, 2009

I personally like President Obama, a lot.  He loves and plays basketball, and so do I.  He is smart, articulate, inspiring, and personable.  If he fails, America fails.  If America fails, we all fail.  So yes, absolutely I do not want to defeat him, I want him to succeed.   But I’m afraid the economy was pushed into the back seat tonight at the President’s health care conference.  We all know health care financing is screwed up in America and needs reform.  We do not need to treat sore throats for people without both health insurance and money in the emergency rooms of hospitals all over the country.  We do not need to see lower middle class people lose their life savings if they have an unexpected health care emergency.  But a robust American economy is what pays for the best health care in the world.  The President is wasting political capital on an important issue, but not the most important issue.  The current estimates are that 1.5 million Americans will run out of unemployment benefits before the end of the year without receiving a job offer.  Tonight, the President claimed that the stimulus bill not only saved jobs, it has created jobs.  Mr. President, the only measure of job creation for a President is for the unemployment rate to go down, not up.  Any other measure is arguing how many angels can sit on the head of a pin. 

Unfortunately, the President is signaling that the economy will have to take a back seat to his more pressing issue of health care financing reform.  Mr. President, there is no more pressing issue in America than good paying jobs.  I will tell you what your advisers, so called, don’t have the guts to tell you.  If unemployment keeps going up rather than down, then you will be a one term wonder.  So please do not tell the American people your administration has “created” jobs.  Instead, please create them. 

Mr. President, how can you actually create jobs?  First, fix the broken credit markets.  Second, understand that America is the world’s leading economy, not an economy that “is unprepared to compete in the 21^st Century.”  We are the world’s leading economy in high tech and biotech.  We have chosen to outsource our manufacturing to China and others and we can rescind that decision at anytime.  The way forward to escape the new great depression is not to become the next export driven economy.  My question to you is export to whom?  My advice is shake up your Whitehouse team and get some economic advisers that will give you straight talk.  You are not the next FDR.  When FDR became President the country had an unemployment rate well over 20% and everyone knew we were up the creek without a paddle.  But this is not the spring of 1933, it is the spring of 1931.  In 1931 the vast majority of Americans did not realize they had already entered the Great Depression.  Currently, the vast majority of Americans do not realize we have entered a new great depression.  When they figure this out they will blame you, not President Bush.   I’m not saying you shouldn’t reform health care.  I am saying that if you don’t rescue the economy, then you can kiss your second term goodbye.