US Stimulus Patronage and Waste
May 15, 2009
NP Editor
By Hans Bader
Barack Obama is following in Herbert Hoover’s footsteps on taxes
and spending
The
$800-billion stimulus package pushed through by President Obama has ignited a
trade war with
A trade war is also underway with
Obama’s protectionism echoes Herbert Hoover’s protectionism, which helped spawn
the Great Depression. President Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which
helped turn a recession into the Great Depression by triggering a trade war
with other countries.
Unemployment is now even higher than what Obama predicted it would be without
the stimulus. The White House now admits that there will be no job growth until
2010. The Congressional Budget Office repeatedly predicted that the stimulus
would shrink the economy “in the long run” but increase it in the short run,
i.e., by the next election.
But so little of the stimulus money has gone into sectors of
the economy where unemployment is high (like construction and transportation)
that it seems to be doing nothing for the economy even in the short run.
The $100-billion it pours into education — a sector where unemployment is very
low, and where the
Only 5.9% of the stimulus will go to transportation, a small amount compared to
the amount of money it showers on state governments, which are using it to
continue to provide lucrative pension and health benefits for state employees,
whose wages continue to rise much faster than private sector workers.
Obama is following in Herbert Hoover’s footsteps on taxes and spending. In the
Great Depression,
As Obama admitted, that cost would be directly passed “on to consumers” — just
the way Herbert Hoover’s 1932 excise tax increase was. Although the tax’s
supporters claim it will cut greenhouse gas emissions, it may perversely
increase them and also result in dirtier air. It is also chock full of
corporate welfare, regional favoritism, political pay-offs and give-aways to special interests.
Reprinted from OpenMarket.org,
the blog of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.