by Mark Silva
"The clock's not at zero, guys,'' said Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary, warning against any premature decisions about the fate of the president's economic stimulus.
This, after a trip to Capitol Hill, the first since inauguration for the president and former senator from Illinois, meeting with Republican leaders about the stimulus that he wants enacted. The Republicans arrived with ideas of their own -- many carrying envelopes into the meeting and handing them to Obama -- largely cutting taxes. The Republicans complain that President Barack Obama is too focused on spending more money.
"Everybody understands that we're going to have to do a lot to get the economy moving again,'' Gibbs said at his daily press briefing late this afternoon, jut winding down at this hour. "The notion that somehow there is only one party... or that people aren't working to get this done... doesn't match this process.''
"The president feels like we're making progress,'' he said. "The president hopes that we're on a President's Day deadline.... To act quickly, that we can't delay. We need to get stimulus into this economy quickly.... He believes we're on track to do that. He's happy that the tone that has been set is the right one.''
Asked about Congressional Budget Office evaluations pegging the potential long-term cost of the president's plan - as reflected in a bill that is emerging from the House - as closer to $1.1 trillion than the $825-billion price tag that proponents have attached to it because of interest costs:
"When the little paper (signed when) you bought your house said how much the cost was, I don't think it factored in the 30-year-cost,'' Gibbs said. It is, indeed, the longer-term cots of debt that worry many of the plan's critics.
What about spending millions of dollars on re-sodding the National Mall in Washington, as the House proposes. Reconditioning the National Mall "will create jobs,'' said Gibbs, reminding everyone that 1.8 million people had assembled on the most visited national park for Obama's inauguration last week.
Rather than focusing on any two percent of the bill that people dispute, he suggested, everyone should look at the 98-percent goal of reviving the economy.
"We're all in a big boat, and we're all having to row,'' Gibbs said. "And if we don't get the boat to shore, we're all going to be in trouble.''
(Photo of Robert Gibbs by Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP)
Comments
Mr Gibbs is very boring nice time to switch chanels.
Posted by: Inky | January 27, 2009 5:06 PM
Can we get the illegal aliens out of the boat first?
Posted by: Big John | January 27, 2009 6:10 PM
I'm a Republican 56 years old, voted for Obama. I am watching a slow-motion disaster. I have yet to hear any pundit, columnist, politician et.al question the fundamental concept of stimulating an economy which is itself dysfunctional. The conventional wisdom is that consumers not spending, earnings and stock prices in the tank, and half-a-million new unemployed each month are the problem, and borrowing nearly $1-Trillion (in addition to the $11-Trillion in debt we're already carrying) is the only solution.
In fact, these 'problems' are the natural consequences of decades of profligacy, a culture of wage entitlement, and a passive conspiracy to legitimize the delusion of prosperity that consumer-credit has created. After WWII, we had an economy which was based on productivity, earned income and saving. We exported products with real value to the rest of the world. Starting in the 70's (I remember getting my first BankAmericard when I was in college in 1972), we began making it more convenient to spend our money. For many years, credit cards were promoted for that reason alone: you didn't have to carry much cash, you got a record of all your purchases, and you could pay for them all at the end of the month with one payment. "And oh, by the way, if you come up a little short, we'll carry the balance forward and you can catch up next month."
But somewhere in the early 90's, that started to change. Credit card companies began promoting their lines of credit, interest rates, minimum payments. Gradually, it became okay to carry a credit card balance indefinitely. Early in this decade, when people were rolling over their credit card balance every month, banks started seeing their customers fall behind. So they began promoting home equity loans, usually by suggesting that a HELOC would allow you to "wipe out" that burdensome credit card balance owing. They knew full well that by then, the euphoria of not having to worry about making that minimum payment would insure that their customers would run up a new balance, and feed even greater profits for them. And in order to accomplish that, they also succeeded in draining off the one stable asset that most ordinary Americans relied upon for their retirement, the equity in their homes.
Meanwhile, Congress, having just experienced four years of budget surpluses, had laid in plans for massive new government spending, funded by the surpluses they had projected they would be receiving for the indefinite future. When the dot-com bubble burst, and suddenly we were back running deficits again, nobody bothered to review the spending plans. The rationale was, these deficits will be temporary.
Do we really need to get back to the days of fantasy prosperity? Would it not be better to allow our economy to correct itself, and us in the process? Does it make sense for a country with a $700-Billion trade deficit, to add another $800-Billion in borrowing, bringing our total national debt to a point where it will very likely be larger than our annual GDP at the end of this year?
I don't believe our new leadership has considered any of this. There has been no consideration given to the proposition that our basic economic practices over a period of nearly 4-decades are primarily responsible for precipitating this crisis. Not one specific proposal has been made that would confront the reality that we were spending far more than we earn before the so-called meltdown hit.
The tragedy here is that the latest bailout (aka:stimulus) hasn't got a chance of solving the problem, it can only defer the day of reckoning by a few months, or maybe a few years. But that will give the people on the top of the heap enough time to re-position their personal assets (real and abstract) so that when the full-blown collapse does occur, they'll have a safe-haven to retreat to, leaving those not quite so prescient to fight it out in the driveways of gas stations, and the all but empty aisles of our supermarkets.
We are about to reap the harvest of 3 decades of arrogance and profligacy, and the ruins of the United States of America will look very different in 2019 than it looks today. But the good news will be: we've paid off the $825-Billion stimulus package we passed with bi-partisan support in 2009. And if you believe that, there's a bridge up in Brooklyn that may actually be for sale about then...or maybe not.
Posted by: ted in pdx | January 27, 2009 8:58 PM
We are also all in the same life boat with respect to our atmosphere and water. How much clean water, fresh air and nature will Bushies and other industrialists be able to buy their children and grandchildren? "Hey kids, sorry we won't be able to take that $30,000 trip to Denali to see the glaciers because there are no more glaciers--I wanted less regulations and more money. How about going skiing in Dubai on those fantastically expensive artificial ski slopes? Aren't we lucky? Let the rest eat cake."
Posted by: Vivian | January 28, 2009 7:15 PM