by Mark Silva
Add another Obama administration voice to the things-are-getting-better-and-boy-what-a-mess-we-inherited chorus:
Austen Goolsbee, appearing on FOX News Channel's Studio B with Shepard Smith, said today that, "The direction (of the economy) has changed...You can tell when you're starting to go in the right direction verses going in the wrong direction."
"We're finally getting to a spot where maybe there's some light at the end of the tunnel,'' the director of the president's economic recovery board told FOX's Gregg Jarrett. "We're getting a series of major policies up and running...all of these things coming on line and giving people some hope.''
This is no time to put the brakes on spending, he says.
"There's no way to do something other than: Spend what needs to be spent right now to prevent the recession from turning into something worse, and then try and get ourselves out of this very big hole that we start at the bottom of,'' he said.
"The president was handed an unbelievable big budget mess from the previous administration,'' Goolsbee said. ""If you come into a house and the roof's on fire, there's an attack-dog in the back and the basement's flooded, you got to go one at a time, but you've got to fix all of those things or you cant live in the house...
"That's been basically what he's had to do.''
This reminded us of Jeb Bush, the former president's younger brother, complaining in an appearance on FOX last week that Obama has been spending a little too much time blaming his predecessor.
"If I had one humble criticism of President Obama, it would be to stop this notion of somehow framing everything in the context of, 'Everything was bad before I got here,' and focus instead on his duties, which we all want him to succeed,' Bush said. "But constantly pushing down the previous president to make yourself look good, I think is a bad thing.''
Comments
The kind of improving economic news that we've been getting lately HAS to be making the deadender Wingnuts heads explode. They were hoping for President Obama and America to fail !!
Hey Wingnuts, if returning to the same tax policies for the rich that existed before Bush is the thing that's got a bee in your bonnet, claiming the end of the republic is at hand -- go for it. If you've suddenly decided that preventing government efforts to stave off a second Great Depression is the thing you're going to hang your collective hats on, or that saving one of the prime manufacturing sectors still left in the country is a bridge too far, by all means protest. Who's stopping you? Who's intimidating you?
On the contrary, the rest of us find your crying and wailing to be not only funny but also superbly instructive. It's increasing taxes on the rich that gets your goat, and absolutely nothing else. The only Constitutional crisis possible is one that might possibly affect your wallet; offenses to other people's freedoms don't rouse a tenth of the same emotion from you deadender nutjobs.
And it stands as a dramatic act of solidarity with conservative leaders in government. Bloviate at every opportunity; remain steadfastly in opposition to everything; suggest nothing; claim that it is not even your responsibility to suggest anything. Like House and Senate Limbaugh Republicans, who have declared sitting on their hands to be an act of supreme virtue and who, when pressed, can only come up with a few terse pages of declarations that the only path forward is to give big businesses more tax breaks, and rich Americans more tax breaks, and eliminate even more regulations on financial behavior -- and that will work this time for sure, in spite of those same exact things bringing the country debt and corruption every other time they have been tried, finally leading to this current brink of economic ruin. No, it seems hard to compete with any acts of leadership as impressive as that.....NOT!
Posted by: Freeper | April 14, 2009 4:50 PM
Goolsbee, the comedian, is out talking budget instead of failed Treasury Secretary Geithner.
Geithner just can't convince the crowd when he speaks. A lot of negative feelings after a speech of Geithner's.
Bush spent NO WHERE near what Obama has spent. Obama has spent more than any other president since the beginning of this country.
The goons are out.
Posted by: Steve | April 14, 2009 4:57 PM
Over in London they have poor and middle class people protesting against the wealthy oligarchy that screwed over their economy and put many of them out of work.....meanwhile here in America, we have idiotic poor and middle class Republican - "tea-baggers" - who are protesting against the richest 1-2%, big corporations and big oil getting a small tax increase while they themselves (because of President Obama and the Dems) are recieving the largest tax cut in history for the middle class and the poor.
Thanks to propaganda outlets in America like Fixed News Channel and Mullah Limbaugh etc, we have some of the dumbest fracking people in the world living here and they all reside in the Republican party.
The Wingnut teabagging parties have already started, here's some early video:
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/103369
Posted by: Repugbot | April 14, 2009 8:04 PM
Freeeper,
.
I'm glad that we have been geeting good economic news lately. It basically proves the point that the economy is recovering w/o BO's loony policies. We all know BO is or will be trying to take credit.
Posted by: Terry | April 14, 2009 9:14 PM
I'm glad that we have been geeting good economic news lately. It basically proves the point that the economy is recovering w/o BO's loony policies. We all know BO is or will be trying to take credit.
Posted by: Terry | April 14, 2009 9:14 PM
.
Let's see if we can figure out TrickledOn Terri's logic here:
- If something bad happens (no matter when it happened) it's Obama or even Bill Clinton's fault.
- If something good happens (no matter when it happened) it's because of George Bush's stellar leadership and staunch Republican policies.
BRILLIANT!........not.
-------------------------
PS - Terri, I can't say that I'm surprised that your swollen head hasn't figured this out yet but you don't have to put a dot, like this....
.
...between your paragraphs, all you have to do is double space between paragraphs...
...like this.....you're welcome, Einstein.
Posted by: you | April 14, 2009 11:13 PM
My guess is that the next few years are going to be simply chock full of wannabe Republican Prez nominee's trying to out-crazy each other in an attempt to become The Official Annointed Head TeaBagger of the Party in 2012.
It's rather like a group of skydivers where each one is trying to be the first to jump without a chute and they all seem determined to go in head-first.
Posted by: George Castanza | April 15, 2009 1:41 AM
Trckled-On You,
Thanks for the secretarial tip - the other girls in the typing pool will be proud of you.
Feel free to provide of any evidence (that would be facts) that will show how the BO policies started turning around economic indicators in February.
Posted by: Terry | April 15, 2009 8:08 PM