
 |
|
May 13, 2013
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
March 16, 2009
/ 20 Adar 5769
In the 9th inning
By
Paul Greenberg
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
What ever happened to Hope and Change, let alone Audacity? Was that threesome just a campaign slogan? Apparently so. Today's challenges may be new, but the Obama administration decided to stick with the old federal budget, which has been in the works since last year before the latest, steepest rise in unemployment, before the Panic of '08 gave way to the Recession of '09 ... in short, before the Obama administration.
Why would it do that? Here's the less than edifying word from Peter Orszag, the new president's new man in charge of the budget. He explains that "fundamentally, the economy is weak...."
This is news? The question is what the administration intends to do about it. This week the command from the helm was: Steady as she sinks. Just keep on drifting on a tide of red ink.
The massive government debt being run up by various bailouts plus a $787-billion stimulus bill (will it prove all sail or just more dead weight?) is troublesome enough. But it's not the size of the stimulus that troubles most maybe it should have been even bigger but its lack of focus. There doesn't seem to be any clear, consistent, coherent strategy to the administration's response to this deepening economic slump.
Back when this country was in the throes of a Great Depression, a president who believed in action Franklin Roosevelt changed course 180 degrees with a simple explanation: The time had come, he said, for Dr. Win-the-War to replace Dr. New Deal. The result: All that massive spending on tanks and planes and ammunition, and the massive war debt that went with it, didn't just win the war; it finally ended the Depression.
The American people could accept that debt, and buy war bonds to finance it, and sacrifice in ways not just great and small but far beyond the mere material, because our very existence as a free nation was at stake. And, with it, the future of the free world.
What is the rationale for the Obama administration's first and gigantic ($410 billion) budget? There doesn't seem to be one except inertia. Or as Mr. Orszag explained, the budget for this year was already in the works, so (what th' heck) why not stick with it?
So much for hope and change. And if this is audacity, what would be just plain old habit?
Some of us had hoped for a change of course or at least a better explanation for continuing on the old one. Why keep on doing the same thing (spend, spend, spend) without clear priorities and expect a different result?
In response, Peter Orszag offered an analogy from what used to be the national pastime: "This is like your relief pitcher coming in into the ninth inning and wanting to redo the whole game. Next year, we will be the starting pitcher, and the game is going to be completely different."
Ah, yes, wait'll next year! Isn't that what Brooklyn Dodgers fans used to say every year? Besides, aren't relievers sent in to save the game, turn it around, put out the fire ... not just throw the same pitches that got the team in trouble in the first place?
Not everybody on the team is prepared to just go on repeating the same motions. To quote Evan Bayh, the Democratic senator from Indiana:
"Last week I was pleased to attend the president's White House Fiscal Responsibility Summit. It's about time we had a leader committed to addressing the deficit, and Mr. Obama deserves great credit for doing so. But what ultimately matters are not meetings or words, but actions. Those who vote for the omnibus this week after standing with the president and pledging to slice our deficit in half last week jeopardize their credibility."
If the country is going to come out of this fiscal dive rather than prolong it, credibility is important in a leader. No credibility, no confidence. No confidence, no investing. And no investing, no long-term economic growth.
What ever happened to all those promises Barack Obama made during the campaign to reduce the deficit, avoid the kind of congressional earmarks that remain the bane of sound budgeting, and generally do the responsible thing when it comes to government spending? Only lip service to those goals remains.
Or as Senator Bayh put it, "Voters rightly demanded change in November's election, but this approach to spending represents business as usual in Washington, not the voters' mandate."
Instead of narrowing the focus of economic policy to produce jobs, jobs, jobs as John McCain and almost all his Republican colleagues in the Senate proposed this $410-billion budget doesn't seem to have any single aim at all; it just spends in all directions. And it comes on top of an equally feckless three-quarters-of-a-trillion-dollar spending bill that was called a stimulus but looked all too much like a vehicle for rewarding the Democrats' favorite interests from ACORN to the teachers' unions.
What this administration needs to offer is more clarity, less confusion. More plan, less patronage. More investment, less ideology.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
Paul Greenberg Archives
© 2006 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|