According to an article by Eamon Javers at Politico.com:
“The president’s chief economic adviser warned Friday that the nation’s unemployment rate could stay ‘unacceptably high’ for years to come — a situation that would seriously complicate Barack Obama’s ability to convince Americans that he’s beating back the recession.
“‘The level of unemployment is unacceptably high,’ National Economic Council Director Larry Summers said Friday. ‘And will, by all forecasts, remain unacceptably high for a number of years.’” [1]
What Summers said is not surprising, the surprise is that it comes from the president’s top economic adviser.
Summers also said the economy is improving. Tell that to the unemployed. Jobs supposedly always lag in a recovery, but Summers says the forecast is “for economic growth at a significant rate during the second half of 2009.” [2]
Quite a lag, I’d say, if unemployment is to remain “unacceptably high for a number of years.” The stimulus is supposed to “create or save” 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010, including the one million already “created or saved” thus far, according to the Administration. How do you measure “saved jobs”? There are currently 14.9 million people unemployed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (at the end of August). If all the people currently working kept their jobs (which they won’t) and the “stimulus” actually created 2.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 (which it won’t), we’d still have a high unemployment rate. Doesn’t sound like a great bargain for $800 billion. We’ll still have a huge deficit, the greatest ever national debt, and higher taxes in place and more on the horizon under Obama’s agenda.
To add Obamacare and cap and trade to all this is the height of fiscal irresponsibility. It is as plain as day that Obama is doing nothing that helps the economy. Now even his top economic adviser says we’ll have high unemployment for years to come. All but the most die-hard Obama fans have to realize that this is a very bleak situation. It is foolhardy to expect anything but a depression if both Obamacare and cap and trade are passed. It’s bad enough without them. Remember the 14.9 million figure does not include people who have given up looking for work or have taken part-time positions.
If we had an Administration and Congress that were as concerned about the working people of America, and the suffering they and their families are enduring and are facing – more concerned with them than with getting their socialist agenda in place – we could have a great deal more prosperity within a fairly short time. They would do something like the following:
1. Forget Obamacare. Take up health care issues later and forget nationalizing it.
2. Forget cap and trade. Recognize it as the fraud and hoax that it is.
3. Keep the Bush tax cuts in place, and don't reduce tax deductions.
4. Reduce corporate tax rates to 15 percent or less.
5. Reduce or eliminate capital gains taxes.
6. Sell government interests in GM, Chrysler, AIG, etc.
7. Don’t do any more bailouts, period.
8. Repeal the remainder of the “stimulus” and don’t do any more of them.
9. Rein in the czars, and let people know what’s going on in government.
If Obama and the Congress did these things, our economy would rebound quickly and they would look like heroes and probably all get re-elected. But this isn’t the Twilight Zone. It’s more like the Outer Limits: “We will control….” Apparently, at all costs.
[1] Eamon Javers, “Adviser: High unemployment for years,” Politico.com, 09/12/09 at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27052.html.
[2] Ibid.
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