Prez Obama Speaks Tonight

Pocono Joe

The Whitehouse said the republican plan wasn’t as good as theirs… I’m shocked!

We could go back and forth with sources supporting our individual views. I might be wrong, but my point was in response to jank's comment to the degree that no one else had any ideas.

http://www.freedomproject.org/Blog/Read.aspx?GUID=f72b4d90-f199-4d9d-8d24-092e6a70df42

"New CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf noted that direct payments to individuals and cutting federal taxes would have the fastest impact while spending could take longer for a number of reasons, including time required for contracting procedures and other planning needs.
In the past for federal programs, there has been a "noticeable lag" between big funding increases and spending, he said on the agency's blog."http://uk.reuters.com/article/marketsNewsUS/idUKN2650866620090127?pageNumber=1

Bottom line is Obama himself ironically spoke about Japan’s "lost decade" in his "press conference." Funny though that he forgot to mention Japan tried SPENDING their way out of their problems... to no avail.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200812220005

Actually... if you really want to talk about real bipartisanship... Rush Limbaugh had the best idea. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/believe_it_or_not_rush_limbaug.html

GuanYin

Pocono Joe wrote: »

Wow... we agree! :eek:

Don't be surprised, I'm a fiscal conservative, it is just things like expensive wars and xenophobic persecution I dislike


Giving money to banks that caused this problem is not the answer. Tax cuts won't help either, mainly because they're less helpful to the people who actually need money.

Ruskie4Rent

Pocono Joe wrote: »

Bottom line is Obama himself ironically spoke about Japan’s "lost decade" in his "press conference." Funny though that he forgot to mention Japan tried SPENDING their way out of their problems... to no avail.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200812220005
]

I suggest you read your own link.

Pocono Joe

It notes both positions (sometimes I try and play fair). But if spending had some measure of success, why was it called the "lost decade?"

Ruskie4Rent

The article doesn't just note both positions. It points to how one position uses Japan's lost decade to show how spending doesn't work while ignoring that Japan's economy seemed to be responding well to spending before they abandoned their stimulus effort.

Pocono Joe

Barak Obama is to speak to Congress and the nation again tonight. I think it will be a mixture of his fiscal goals, and much ado about damage control.

I’m interested on how he spins his goals. How will he sell a liberal spending agenda while promising to cut the deficit; how will he will try to reassure the markets while continually spouting dreadful economic conditions; and how will he will try to subdue the growing number of "tea party" advocates while explaining the banking, housing and auto bailouts. (A Rasmussen poll released Monday found that 55 percent of those surveyed thought federal mortgage subsidies to those most at risk of losing their homes would be "rewarding bad behavior.")

And he will try and mitigate some market damage his administration has directly caused. Last summer, Senator Charles Schumer’s high profile criticism of IndyMac’s financial condition caused a run on that bank, which failed days later. Vice President Joe Biden told lawmakers that there was probably a 30 percent chance the Obama administration would fail. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner vague bank-rescue plan rollout sent the DOW down 382 points. And on Friday Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd went on Bloomberg TV Friday and talked about the possibility of bank nationalization, which panicked investors and sent the Dow down another hundred points within an hour. Count the number of times he will use the word "hope."

He blames the Bush administration for the economic crisis, and faults uncontrolled spending as a major part of the problem. Yet the new budget bill (not including the stimulus package) adds $20.5 billion more to Bush’s domestic spending requests for the current budget year ending Sept. 30. Together with prior appropriations for defense, homeland security and veterans, this breaks the trillion-dollar mark for non-emergency appropriations, providing $1.012 trillion for 2009, a 6.7 percent increase over 2008.

I think Obama will promise budget discipline by scaling back the Iraq War, raising taxes on the rich and "reforming" health care. The first two at least reduce the deficit, but at the cost of security and jobs. The latter will increase costs tremendously because... whenever has there been a cost savings when the government expands health-care programs?

Hopefully during his speech, broadcasters won't air a bright red, white and blue box tracking the sinking DOW as he tries to explain how we will be going from an era of tax cuts supposedly paying for themselves, to an era with spending increases paying for themselves.

JohnMc1

Basically he's going to pull the old "Waaah!! The Republicans don't want to play ball again. Its their fault for everything wrong in this country not the Democrats.Waahhh!!!" card again.

Overheal

Rome wasn't built in a day, and MLK's dream took a very long time to be realized, even though admittedly it happened much sooner than anyone really anticipated. I'm not surprised that the Partisan Politics are still in full swing.

As far as this recession goes im staying the hell out of it: I'm begining to wonder if it wasn't an election year (08) it would have been blown so out of proportion. But no, everyone was watching that election. Fcuking Everyone, Worldwide. Then the Dow had a big dip, and McCain made a fumble on fundamentals, and everybody sh!t a brick, only making things worse. Imagine what might have happened if nobody was watching CNN/FOX/MSNBC all day every day when this happened: probably wouldnt have been a tenth as dramatic as the recession we're in right now.

Frankly I wish everybody Left and Right would quit calling this the apocalypse of our time. Its only making things worse.