What’s the best way to wake up the almost sound-asleep economy? More government programs — at least, that’s the best solution according to President Barack Obama, who spent Labor Day stumping the Midwest in the course of unveiling another budget-busting “stimulus” plan.

 

Like his last stimulus plan, this one excites liberal lawmakers and pundits, but would do nothing anytime soon to help the economy. And that’s not our analysis. Rather, that’s the assessment by Obama’s own White House spokesman, who essentially hung his boss out to dry.

 

You just can’t get good help these days, it seems.

 

Obama’s proposed jobs program would allot $50 billion to rebuild roads, railways and runways. But the words were barely out of the president’s mouth before administration spokesmen were conceding that all that spending would not actually translate into more jobs until sometime next year

at the earliest.

 

There’s some “stimulus” for you.

 

You’ll recall that Obama’s initial $814 billion stimulus package last year failed to stimulate the economy at all. If anything, Obama’s fondness for higher taxes and deeper deficit spending have hurt the economy, thanks in large part to the uncertainty in the business world stemming from the uncertainty about what he and the Democrat-controlled Congress still have up their sleeves.

 

As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky put it on Monday, the latest Obama proposal would raise taxes while Americans are “still looking for the ‘shovel-ready’ jobs they were promised more than a year ago” from the first stimulus.

 

Meanwhile, House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said what’s needed is not more “stimulus” spending.

 

Rather, “We need to end Washington Democrats’ out-of-control spending spree, stop their tax hikes and create jobs by eliminating the job-killing uncertainty that is hampering our small business.

 

Yes, Obama and his acolytes are quick to accuse the Republicans of failing to cooperate, and thus hurting the economy. But the fact is that the kind of “cooperation” he seeks would merely sink the economy even deeper into the mire into which Obama’s policies have already run it.

 

—Marietta Daily Journal