Malcolm Cutchins: Obama used AIG outrage to distract
Columnist
Published: March 26, 2009
The anger about the bonuses paid to AIG executives is certainly understandable.
What is not, however, is the outrage over just one-tenth of one percent of the bailout money to AIG used for this purpose, in light of the astronomical payouts of other taxpayer funds by President Obama and the Congress. As Shepherd Smith on FOX News noted, the negative AIG publicity has been “Obama’s distraction plan.” It has worked well. There should be much greater anger at the taxpayer funds paid to incompetent congressmen who should shoulder the blame for many of the root causes of the mess we are in.
Speaking of swallowing, a nurse at EAMC told me of a common problem. Most people attempt to swallow a pill by holding their head back and swallowing from that position. This position restricts the esophagus, however, making large pills more difficult to swallow. The best way is to hold the head back only to move the pill to the back of the throat, then drop the chin to a normal position and swallow.
Unfortunately, the nation’s current batch of “spending pills,” some call them bills, are in a category by themselves. Not prescribed by qualified “doctors” (some would say not even qualified economists), they constitute financial malpractice. One is reminded of the medical doctor’s Hippocratic Oath, “First, do no harm.” These “spending pills” are too big even for this country’s very large mouth or for any swallowing technique. “Swallowing” them will most likely harm our country greatly, likely even choking the “patient” to death!
Consider just a few descriptions that recently have been in print:
* A Congressional Budget Office Report noted that “Doctor” Obama’s proposed “budget pill” would “produce $9.3 trillion in deficits over the next decade – more than four times the deficits of the George W. Bush presidency” (Business article in this newspaper on the last page of the Sports section, Monday).
* From The Claremont Institute (March 16): “Every time we hear the President or a congressional leader speak, we’re told we’re in one crisis or another … But (we) believe the true crisis is that America seems to be turning away from our founding principles and toward European-style Socialism.”
* “The failure of the Obama administration to produce a credible bank rescue plan is downright alarming” (“Enemies of the White House: Discontent is growing on the center right,” The Weekly Standard, March 16).
* The stimulus “pill” uses various tax credits that “are really spending run through the tax code and as such will do nothing to boost the ailing economy” (March 23 Web memo by C.S. Dubay published by The Heritage Foundation). These spending schemes are referred to as “The Wrong Medicine.”
Drastic overspending on radical policies is not just my opinion.
Dr. Malcolm Cutchins is an emeritus professor of engineering of Auburn University and writes a weekly column for the Opelika-Auburn News.
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Reader Reactions
i’m unsure as to where you came up with the idea that mr. bush had added only $2.4 trillion to the national debt.
here’s a quote from cbs news, dated september 29, 2008:
“...the national debt has grown by more than $4 trillion during George W. Bush’s presidency.
It’s the biggest increase under any president in U.S history.
On the day President Bush took office, the national debt stood at $5.727 trillion. The latest number from the Treasury Department shows the national debt now stands at more than $9.849 trillion. That’s a 71.9 percent increase on Mr. Bush’s watch.“
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/09/29/couricandco/entry4486228.shtml
the real shame of it all is that after all the new debt mr. bush left us…we really got very little for the money.
does anyone think the $2 trillion or so iraq will eventually cost was stimulative for the economy?
does anyone think maybe we should have paid down national debt for the past five years, instead of giving the most wealthy amongst us tax cuts that didn’t create the promised new jobs that would also have been very helpful right about now?
who thinks investing money in rebuiling new orleans more completely than we have to this point might have created a lot of “living wage” jobs we could really use right now?
you think maybe it would have been smarter to invest in windmills and a smarter grid…and some battery technology…so that we could be driving plug-in f-150s instead of paying hundreds of billions of dollars a year to our enemies for imported oil?
the obama spending plan hopes do do some of those things—and if we pull it off, it frees up money in the economy that we could use to pay the debt back in the out years of the budget.
one more thing: one reason the obama deficit numbers are higher is because obama is including spending in his plan that the bush administration kept off their budgets…even though they were spending the money.
two examples:
—the iraq/afghanistan war spending has not been included in the bush budgets—and it is in obama’s, adding a few hundred billion to the deficit.
—until this year, there had been no money budgeted for disaster relief…instead the bush administration relied on off-budget “emergency appropriations” (as they also have with the wars).
obama is including disaster relief money, up front, in his budget—and that also makes his deficit appear larger.
so let’s sum it up: the deficit number you claim for the bush administration is almost 100% too low, mr. bush raised the debt more than any other president in history, part of the reason the obama budget has a high deficit is because this budget includes spending mr. bush’s budgets did not, and if all goes well the obama spending plan will cut “fixed costs” in the economy in a way that can free up the cash to help repay the borrowed money.
and finally, a word on sources: if sean hannity was my doctor, and he told me something was wrong…well, let’s just say that, considering his record of accuracy in predicting events, i’d be looking for a second opinion—and probably a third, as well.
mr. cutchins might wish to consider a similar approach when listening to hannity expound on economics.
Distortions from the right’s Mighty Wurlitzer are unfortunately rather easy to swallow yet a learned man like Dr. Chuckles ought to know better. I’d argue that he and his are the ones needing to do the distracting. Bu$hCo and his GOP Rubber Stamp Congress (with a little help from the Centrists, Blue Dogs, and other Corporatist that are DINOs at best) got us in this mess. Finally, if in fact we are looking at a deficit four times larger than what Dubyah gave us, at least it will be from something beyond tax cuts for the swells. The Obama plan wasn’t Progressive enough yet there are some investments for our future within the stimulus efforts. The kids paying for this mess will need all the help we can give them!
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