Yesterday before President Barack Obama’s 100 days news conference, the Commerce Department released data showing that the U.S. economy shrank at an annual rate of 6.1% in the January-March quarter ^[1]. This comes on top of a report ^[2] from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics released earlier this month showing that the U.S. has lost more than 1.2 million jobs since President Barack Obama was sworn into office. Yet despite all this bad economic news Obama claimed ^[3] that his stimulus $787 billion deficit spending stimulus package “has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs.” While pressing Obama on a variety of national security questions, the White House press corps failed to ask: “Mr. President, if your administration is already claiming credit for jobs created in this economy, when can the American people start holding you accountable for all the jobs lost?”

Obama’s desire to escape all accountability for his economic policies was also on display earlier in the day when he told a town hall in Missouri: “We inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit. That wasn’t me.” ^[4] Oh really? The Associated Press fact checked ^[5] Obama’s claim and reports:

Congress controls the purse strings, not the president, and it was under Democratic control for Obama’s last two years as Illinois senator. Obama supported the emergency bailout package in President George W. Bush’s final months — a package Democratic leaders wanted to make bigger.
…
He’s persuaded Congress to expand children’s health insurance, education spending, health information technology and more. He’s moving ahead on a variety of big-ticket items on health care, the environment, energy and transportation that, if achieved, will be more enduring than bank bailouts and aid for homeowners.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated his policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years, even accounting for his spending reduction goals. Now, the deficit is nearly quadrupling to $1.75 trillion.

The cost of Obama’s massive spending explosion is about to hit home. The Treasury Department announced yesterday ^[1] that it is going to step up the issuing of 30-year bonds to cover the hundreds of billions of dollars the Obama administration is spending on bailouts and stimulus. A special advisory committee to the Treasury then warned, “Treasuries will probably not receive the same favorable demand treatment from either source over the coming quarters.” Translation: foreign and domestic investors are going to demand significantly higher interest rates in exchange for buying the avalanche of new bonds. ^[1]

Higher interest rates will strangle our economic recovery. Congress and the President should do the opposite of what they apparently intend: They should cut taxes on productive activities, not increase them. They should cut spending, not increase it. ^[6] And rather than increase government spending with new entitlements like a government-run health plan, they should reduce future entitlement benefits to give credit markets some confidence that U.S. policymakers have not entirely abandoned fiscal discipline.

Article printed from The Foundry: http://blog.heritage.org

URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2009/04/30/morning-bell-the-question-that-didnt-get-asked/

URLs in this post:

[1] the U.S. economy shrank at an annual rate of 6.1% in the January-March quarter: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/business/economy/30econ.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

[2] report: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

[3] claimed: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/us/politics/29text-obama.html

[4] “We inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit. That wasn’t me.”: http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=3954&u_sid=10622447

[5] fact checked: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090429/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_fact_check_obama

[6] They should cut taxes on productive activities, not increase them. They should cut spending, not increase it.: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm2257.cfm

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Bybee says “no regrets”

Obama to end representation in interrogations?

FBI Interrogator: Waterboarding was unnecessary with Zubaydah

Update: Tom Maguire does some fact-checking on Soufan:

Ali Soufan, an FBI interrogator of Abu Zubaydah joins the torture debate on the NY Times op-ed page and explains that the Bush era enhanced interrogation techniques were unnecessary and ineffective.  Torture doesn’t work, and Mr. Soufan is today’s darling of the reality-based community.  However, based on earlier Times reporting and the DoJ Inspector General report Mr. Soufan is, well, misleading us. …

Pelosi on waterboarding: I knew nothing

Or rather, almost nothing. She admits she was told that waterboarding could be used but insists she was never told it would be used, which I can only take to mean she was sufficiently comfortable with the practice in theory as not to call a halt to it in the conceptual stage.

Robert Kennedy: Obama “indentured servant” to coal industry

Rationing health care

It doesn't matter what your doctor says; the Obama administration plans to decide if you ...

Obamateurism of the Day

I already have an entire week’s worth of Obamateurisms lined up from Barack Obama’s trip to Trinidad this weekend, but let’s start with the one that might have set the stage for all the fumbles that followed. My friend Monica Showalter at IBD notes that Obama kicked off the Summit of the Americas by failing to understand the importance of the Monroe Doctrine, its highly relevant application in today’s Latin America, and missing one important piece of historical fact about the Bush administration:

Perhaps this lack of leadership is based on ignorance of history. Obama told CNN En Espanol: “There has always been a tradition of concern that the United States has been heavy-handed when it comes to foreign policy in Latin America. And that’s not something that just arose during the Bush administration. That’s something that dates back to the Monroe Doctrine and a long history of U.S. involvement in Latin America.”

Some history: President Bush was the first U.S. leader in decades to launch no military action on a Latin country. Not very “heavy handed.” In fact, his immigration plan showed he was a softie.

Meanwhile, the Monroe Doctrine was declared by President Monroe to protect Latin America’s infant democracies from European takeover, a real prospect in 1823. Obama’s double apology for that as Iran and Russia erect bases in the region is a bad signal to the region’s real democracies — and comfort for our foes.

The Monroe Doctrine chased off European monarchies from expanding colonization in the New World and set a policy of self-determination almost a century before Woodrow Wilson would make that American policy. While we obviously haven’t had a spotless record in Central and South America, the region was far better off under the Monroe Doctrine than they otherwise would have been — and so were we. Maybe Obama should have studied its history a little more closely before becoming the latest successor to Monroe.

The apology tour continues in Latin America

Obama’s apologizing for being dictatorial … to Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, and the Castros.  As for “dictat[ing] our terms,” we used to call that defending American interests.  When negotiating, people try to get the best terms for themselves.  We didn’t send gunboats to Venezuela or Bolivia during the Bush administration, and the only people seizing assets over the last eight years have been the Venezuelans under Chavez.

Once again, we have the new President embarking on the “We Suck ‘09″ tour, kicked off in Europe, where he felt the need to apologize for the last administration’s efforts to defend America’s interests on the international stage.  Obama likes to call this “smart power” and tells us we’ll get more by appearing humble than by pursuing our interests in the normal fashion.  So far, the rest of the world has applauded Obama’s performance — and gone on to reject our requests for economic cooperation, combat troops for Afghanistan, partnership with Russia against Iran, and North Korean continuation of the six-party nuclear disarmament talks without launching long-range missiles over Japan.

Auto czar to banks: Lose it all on Chrysler

Auto czar under investigation for kickbacks

Smart Power I: Sarkozy dismisses Obama as “unsubstantial”

Smart Power II: Faulty reset button

Smart Power III: Let’s keep pirates from buying boats