Douglas Groothuis also tweeted this Fox News article by Paul Ryan, in which Ryan talks about the current economic crisis and his plan to address the issues.
Excerpt:
There are three main reasons why the president’s policies have made this recovery weaker than usual:
1. Regulatory uncertainty: After the stimulus passed, the president turned his attention immediately to costly overhauls of the nation’s financial and health-care sectors. These overhauls needlessly transferred more control over America’s economy to government bureaucrats in Washington, without fixing the problems they were intended to address. The transfer of so much power to the arbitrary dictates of federal regulators has made it hard for businesses to plan for the future with confidence, and things will remain this way until these laws are replaced with real reforms.
2. Tax uncertainty: The president’s ad hoc tax policies, with a mix of tax hikes on job creators and temporary rebates for others being the hallmarks of his approach, have left businesses in the lurch. Moreover, the president’s new health care law imposes a crushing $800 billion tax hike, and he continues to threaten businesses and families with higher rates in the future, even as he dithers on his vague promise to address America’s uncompetitive corporate tax rate, which is the highest in the developed world.
3. Debt uncertainty: The president has not put forward a plan that saves Medicare from bankruptcy, even though nonpartisan experts tell us that this could happen in 9-13 short years unless we act. Each year that we fail to put our critical government health and retirement programs on a path to long-term solvency, we are making trillions of dollars of unfunded promises to future retirees. We are already borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend, and Washington’s inability to solve its spending problems is leading rating agencies such as Standard & Poors to downgrade our credit outlook. Government under this administration is failing at its number-one economic job, which is to create a stable, predictable environment for job creators.
The number of Americans filing for jobless aid rose to an eight-month high last week and productivity growth slowed in the first quarter, clouding the outlook for an economy that is struggling to gain speed.
While the surprise jump in initial claims for unemployment benefits was blamed on factors ranging from spring break layoffs to the introduction of an emergency benefits program, economists said it corroborated reports this week indicating a loss of momentum in job creation.
New claims for state jobless benefits rose 43,000 to 474,000, the highest since mid-August, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists had expected claims to fall.
[…]Other reports this week showed weaker employment growth in the manufacturing and services sectors in April and a step back in private hiring, suggesting Friday’s closely watched data could prove weaker than economists have been expecting.
An industry survey released on Thursday found hiring by U.S. small businesses almost ground to a halt in April.
This isn’t surprising. Government spending takes money OUT of the private sector and puts money IN to the non-productive public sector.
Indeed, President Obama’s stimulus bill failed by its own standards. In a January 2009 report, White House economists predicted that the stimulus bill would create (not merely save) 3.3 million net jobs by 2010. Since then, 3.5 million more net jobs have been lost, pushing the unemployment rate above 10 percent.[1] The fact that government failed to spend its way to prosperity is not an isolated incident:
During the 1930s, New Deal lawmakers doubled federal spending–yet unemployment remained above 20 percent until World War II.
Japan responded to a 1990 recession by passing 10 stimulus spending bills over 8 years (building the largest national debt in the industrialized world)–yet its economy remained stagnant.
In 2001, President Bush responded to a recession by “injecting” tax rebates into the economy. The economy did not respond until two years later, when tax rate reductions were implemented.
In 2008, President Bush tried to head off the current recession with another round of tax rebates. The recession continued to worsen.
Now, the most recent $787 billion stimulus bill was intended to keep the unemployment rate from exceeding 8 percent. In November, it topped 10 percent.[2]
So obviously government spending reduces employment – it could never happen any other way. And everyone who has ever held a job in private industry knows this. Government spending only works in the university classrooms, where the right answer is always the answer that makes academic wordsmiths feel good about themselves. Good intentions are the right answer in the classroom – good results are the right answer in the free market.
Drilling moratorium = higher gas prices = low consumer confidence
Consumer confidence dropped last week to the lowest level in more than a month as rising fuel costs squeezed American household budgets.
The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index decreased to minus 46.2 in the week ended May 1, the lowest level since the end of March, from minus 45.1 the prior period. Another report showed claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly surged last week, raising the risk the improvement in the jobs market has stalled.
Stocks dropped and Treasury securities rose on concern that rising expenses, including the highest gasoline prices in almost three years, may prompt companies and households to cut back on spending. The reports bolster the arguments of Federal Reserve policy makers like Chairman Ben S. Bernanke who’ve said job growth is too slow to remove record monetary stimulus.
Obama has been printing money in order to goose people into spending more instead of saving. The problem with devaluing the currency, which is what he is doing, occurs when you reach the stage where consumers stop spending because prices must increase when you print money. We are now at that stage, and our economy is about to go down the drain. Interest rates will have to rise, which is going to slow economic growth even more. This is all known.
When you don’t understand economics, you take the whack-a-mole approach to fixing the economy. That’s what Obama has done. He keeps trying to control things from the top instead of trusting businesses and consumers with their own money. Everything Obama does makes the economy worst. He doesn’t know what he is doing, and he won’t listen to people who do know. His baseless confidence (arrogance) should have been a red flag to the American people. There is nothing worse than hiring someone who thinks that they know everything, but who hasn’t the qualifications to run a lemonade stand.
When Democrats held Congress, the Obama agenda was audacious. Today, faced with global unrest and an economic reckoning, the president is filling out basketball brackets and scolding school bullies.
‘There is only one president,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., told Politico this week, when asked if President Obama should be exercising leadership toward reforming America’s out-of-control entitlement spending programs, such as Medicare and Social Security.
The soothsayer famously told Julius Caesar to “beware the ides of March.” One of the priority items for Obama on Tuesday, March 15, was taping his picks for the NCAA basketball tournament.
Last week, the president and the first lady were holding a “White House Conference on Bullying Prevention,” at which he recalled being taunted because of “big ears and the name that I have.” He lamented recent youthful suicides, such as those of Ty Field and Carl Walker-Hoover.
We can’t just accept that “kids will be kids,” Obama insisted, citing data showing that many American students have been “pushed, shoved, tripped, even spit on.”
Then, of course, there is the partying. Late last month, the president and first lady treated themselves to an East Room concert by Smokey Robinson, Sheryl Crow, comedian Jamie Foxx and others. At previous soirees, the Obama White House has hosted Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Tony Bennett, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and even a cavalcade of stars from Broadway shows.
And let’s not forget former Beatle Paul McCartney being flown in from England to sing “Michelle” to the first lady and attack President George W. Bush from the East Room stage.
He has no idea what the average American family is facing right now.
WINTERY KNIGHT 