Merkel, addressing a business audience in Berlin today, said she told Obama in a phone call that cutting government debt is “absolutely important for us,” exposing a second point of contention ahead of the June 26-27 G-20 summit in Canada.As if to pour salt in that wound, the leaders of the G20 nations have pledged to cut spending in an effort to stimulate their respective economies, despite the exhortations of Obama.
Whew!
Not that it means anything, of course. Obama and his economically illiterate Congressional cohorts have demonstrated that they hold the American people in contempt when it comes to big, expensive government programs that severely restrict the economic freedom of the country.
Let's step outside the friendly confines of the Beltway for a minute and take a realistic look at what the $787B Stimulus Bill has actually done for the countrys' unemployment figures. Have we received our money's worth from this effort to lift us out of the deepest recession in history?
We'll ignore this administrations' new paradigm of "jobs created or saved" since there is no accurate way to measure their newly created statistic. Instead, we'll use the old measuring stick of numbers of unemployed Americans. Using the governments' own Bureau of Labor statistics for a quick check, scroll down to the end of the page and note the unemployment rates for 2008 (5.8%) versus the 2009 rate of 9.3%. That's a 60 per cent increase in unemployment in one year. The Stimulus Bill was passed in February of 2009, giving it nearly a full year to show a positive effect on the nations' economy.
Suppose for a minute that you're the CEO of a large corporation. Let's say you have a plan that you'll present to the board of directors that you say will take the company to new heights. The board likes the sound of your idea and gives you the go-ahead to enact your plan. One year rolls around and your plan has not only not produced the results you promised, but has instead cost the company half of its market share. The companys' stock now sits a record low and market share is merely a fond memory. How long do you think it would take before you were asked to resign? And could you blame the board after they gave you the green light for your idea?
This is the disconnect between Washington and the real world. The Obama administration is beyond clueless when it comes to matters economic and has ventured into the area of doing outright damage. Their policies are actively prohibiting the creation of jobs by removing needed capital from the private sector and funneling it into Washington to pay the interest on the debt for the many massive new spending programs like Health Care Reform.
Fortunately for us, the rest of the world seems to be waking up to the simple fact that runaway government spending is doing far more harm than good. Hopefully, those other governments and their leaders will dismiss the failed notion of government as the fixer of all economic woes.
The very best thing that government can do, right now and in the future, is to get out of the way and let the private sector do what it does best, namely produce and grow wealth. Those in Washington today don't seem to have the foggiest clue where tax money comes from. It's not created out of thin air by Washington and it doesn't grow on cherry trees. Economic freedom works every single time it is tried and always results in growth and prosperity. By now, it should be very clear to everyone that extreme leftist government policies are harmful to the country and it's people.
We have reached a point of diminishing returns on our tax dollar. So much is being taken from the private sector that we can no longer ignore the consequences.
Big government is now officially too big.
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