President Obama said during the election that he was going to break the partisan gridlock in Washington. With this in mind, the current fight over the bailout (bringing government spending to $1600 billion so far) will prove to be difficult. Not a single Republican voted for the stimulus bill in the House, and the Democrats have a huge fight in the Senate. If they try to ram-rod it through Congress (which they probably can do), the partisan flares and recoil will be intense.
I have had little time to study politics (I'm busy with Aquinas right now), but what I do know is that the current bill is the collaboration of every Democrat on Capitol Hill's spending fantasy. Pork? You haven't seen pork till you've seen this bill.
I disagreed with bailing out the banks, Wall Street, and the Big Three in Michigan, and I oppose a bill of this kind. For this kind of money, every family who makes under $100k/year could get $25,000. It wouldn't be much better than the current mess, but would be an improvement. If we're going to have socialism, why not a socialism that benefits us, instead of saving businesses who cannot make a profit? Let the market work and reallocate the resources these corporations mismanaged. Corporate welfare truly boggles my mind. If a company is successful it won't need help, and if it isn't successful, it shouldn't get help.
On a happier note, it's interesting that Richard Maybury predicted this sort of inflation and stimulus package. As I mentioned earlier, such a measure dates back for 30 years, when the government realized it could inflate and ease recessions. The Carter and Reagan recessions were thus ended. I bet President Obama will do the same thing, allow the Fed to print and print and print.
Alas, for Maybury and his "Early Warning Report" (a market analysis/geopolitics newsletter) readers are doing quite well. Makes me wish I had the capital to invest sneakily and take advantage of the current crisis, but all I got right now is Aquinas.
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It also does little good to withdraw soldiers from Iraq in order to send them to Afghanistan. Campaign promises are mostly hot air and politics, mixed with wishful thinking. The big Bailout #2 DID pass the house, to the tune of almost 900 billion dollars. And yes, most of it is pork, and there are still no regulations for accountability as to how it is spent. The democrats jumped right on to the opportunity they were waiting for, to get everything they wanted while dad is using his credit card. Very little of it has anything to do with growing the economy, creating jobs or investing in infrastructure.
As Nancy Pelosi put it, "We won the election, we wrote the bill."
Don Manzullo has some good comments on his website.
http://www.manzullo.org/
He has proposed an alternate financial recovery plan that I think would be more effective than the huge piggy wallowing its way through congress now.
Tax cuts for middle class Americans aren't going to happen either. But then I could have told you that...
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