Lowering The Bar
The administration has started moving the goalposts now claiming we won't expect to see the benefits of the Generational Theft Act (Economic Stimulus) until late summer or fall.
This, of course, is not what they used to be claiming. When it passed, they had a much quicker horizon for when we'd see the impact.
In February, White House budget director Peter Orszag said the benefits of the stimulus would take "weeks to months" to be felt. Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council, was even more optimistic when he told CNN "You'll see the effects begin almost immediately." And just last month, Jared Bernstein, Biden's top economic advisor, joined administration officials in asserting that the stimulus was already working, despite rising unemployment rates.
Then there's the case of the now-famous chart, prepared in January by the Obama transition team to forecast unemployment rates with and without a stimulus in place.
No wonder they want to move the goalposts.
2 comments:
I read a great TIME article yesterday. It was about FDR and which of his policies helped, and which ones didn't. The WAY overspending pushed the depression out longer, while things like the WPA and building highways helped shorten it. The balance in the end wound up being that FDR's overspending ended up prolonging the Great Depression until WWII, whereas had he just done things like the highway construction, et al, the Depression would have ended years earlier.
I think its going to be a similiar case for Obama's economic policy. Some of his policies will be regarded by historians as good; most of them will be regarded as well intentioned but actually harmful in the end.
standard liberal procedure: change the rule mid-game when the old rules aren't to their advantage anymore. They've been doing it for decades.
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