Out of ideas

Betsy Newmark blogged

The Washington Post has a story entitled, "Nervous Democrats say President Obama must be bolder on economy." The sad thing is that Obama has used up his bold efforts on the economy. He had his chance for the first two years of his administration when he had an filibuster-proof control of the Congress and blew it.

They could have raised the debt limit as high as they wanted to, or even eliminated it altogether. They didn't want to get blamed. They did not even pass a budget. The Republican House did.

He spent over a trillion dollars and arguably made things worse with his pork-laden stimulus and increased government interference in the market place. He's out of ideas now or the ones he has are ineffectual and counterproductive. What he could do such as easing up on regulations, pushing through free-trade deals, and allowing more drilling or the construction of the Canada pipeline, he is too beholden to special interests to do.

The Republican President in 2013 will do all of those, plus repeal Obama Care and Dodd / Frank, as soon as he/she is in office. And job growth will skyrocked.

Mostly what he has are calls for more taxes. His Democratic allies want him to advance some sort of "bold" plan that, even though it wouldn't get through the Congress, he could use in a sort of Trumanesque campaign against a "do nothing" Congress.

Good luck with that.

His aides are listening and promising that he'll lay out some measures for "creating jobs, helping the middle class, and guiding lawmakers on a “balanced” way to cut deficits, raise taxes on the wealthy and adjust entitlements."

He has been trying that, and it is not working.

It's two and a half years into his term and he's now thinking about these sorts of things. Where he's been all this time? Oh, yeah. Making things worse. And now there is even less federal money to throw around in the kind of ideas he's pondering.

But he has had plenty of time to play golf. Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned. Obama played golf while London burned.