If there is one moment which shows how unfit Barack Obama is to serve in the times he does, it was when he proposed $53 billion for high-speed rail. Anyone proposing such spending when crafting an annual budget with a deficit higher (in constant FY 2000 dollars) than the entire national budget in 1990 simply can’t be serious about confronting our fiscal mess, particularly given polls showing an increasing concern with the federal government’s spending binge (and the concomitant explosion of debt) and the results of last November’s elections.
The president’s budget budget, as Karl Rove wrote yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, “is not a serious governing document. It’s a political one, designed to boost his re-election chances.” And new kinds of politicians seeking to change the way Washington operates are supposed to put governing ahead of politics. Or so I thought.
High-speed rail may be a fine (and dandy idea), but, well, as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie understood, in nixing a similar idea which could also facilitate travel, you shouldn’t build something you can’t afford. And we don’t have the money to pay for the numerous programs the federal government has long supported.
House Speaker John Boehner recently got into some hot water for calling it like it is:
Over the last two years since President Obama has taken office, the federal government has added 200,000 new federal jobs. . . . And if some of those jobs are lost in this, so be it. We’re broke. It’s time for us to get serious about how we’re spending the nation’s money.
If you’re going to get serious about addressing the nation’s fiscal problems, you’re going to need to make tough choices. And not proposing new spending initiatives when the federal deficit is larger than the economies of most nations.
UPDATE: Calling the president’s enthusiasm for high-speed rail “serious case of policy delusion“, Joel Kotkins says his advocacy of more federal spending on this initiative shows just how out of touch he is with our nation’s fiscal reality and the national mood:
Perhaps nothing so illustrates President Obama’s occasional disconnect with reality than his fervent advocacy of high-speed rail. Amid mounting pressure for budget cuts that affect existing programs, including those for the inner city, the president has made his $53 billion proposal to create a national high-speed rail network as among his top priorities.
Read the whole thing. Via Instapundit.
High speed rail is going back to the early 1900’s when major railroads, branch lines and local railroads plus inter-urban lines linked the smallest of towns (which always built near a railroad) with the nation at large. Goods were shipped through complicated shipping mazes without the hint of computer help. Progressives hate the past, remember? How come they are stuck on going back to rail and making it faster as their solution?
Railroads were killed by unions and taxation. The interstate highway system allows trucks to go where they want efficiently and right to the pick up and delivery door without paying right-of-way taxes or going through a maze of union workers who will or won’t according to union rules. (Independent trucks have been warred upon by the Teamsters over the years, but they have never been rounded up and Hoffaized.)
Japan has fantastic high speed rail. It costs a small fortune to ride. Japan has fantastic high speed roads. They cost a small fortune to enter. The US has not so fantastic light rail lines that are cheap to ride, under constant strain for ridership and always broke. But, we need to build bigger, faster and more light rail to get people out of their cars and riding from point to point where they do something or other to get home to the suburbs.
As far as Boehner goes – what is his plan to add jobs in this economy?
Presumably, all this government cutting he’s been referring to is supposed to create jobs. I’m not exactly sure how that’s supposed to work, especially when he’s had a hard time coming up with specifics about what to cut. And now he says on national television be completely flippant about 200,000 jobs being lost? He actually seems eager to see those people get laid off, and this is the guy that Republicans want to rescue the economy? By what magic does more people losing their jobs mean that more jobs get created?
Taking Levi’s stupid comment to its conclusion, I guess the solution for an economic downturn is for the Government to simply hire everybody and set them all up with lavish pay, benefits, and pensions.
Of course, that idea wouldn’t work if taken to ludicrous extremes. But the idea that you have to spend money to make money is common sense. During a recession, the government is one of the only components in society that is large and stable enough that it can run deficits when other sectors of the economy are shutting down. The idea is for the government to off-set some of the private contraction during an economic emergency. That kind of plan obviously has an upper limit of effectiveness, there’s no need for you to be facetious.
Although, if you’d like to play silly games, conservative economic theory states that government revenues go up as taxes go down. Shouldn’t a tax rate of 0% result in more revenue that the government could possibly spend? We’d have no deficit overnight! Conversely, you could achieve another conservative goal by raising taxes to 100%, because as all small government conservatives know, higher taxes means less government revenue. Tax rates of 100% means the government has no money to function!
President Obama has not been serious about the deficit since he’s been in office; recall he demonized President George W. Bush’s deficit spending, yet his first act was Porkulus which quadrupled the debt in one stoke. Porkulus also increased the size of the Federal Government until it is repealed. The House Democrats increased debt spending 4 times in one year & it was signed into law. ObamaCare is another exploding black hole of deficits.
Obama wants a centralized powerful Federal Government at the expense of the people & our Constitution. This is a road to ruin for the Obama Democrats & out country if we remain on the spiral path.
Of course, that idea wouldn’t work if taken to ludicrous extremes.
Why not, Levi?
After all, you have stated that government spending is always perfect and never causes any problems.
Why don’t you explain why V the K’s answer is not correct? You claim that spending money always creates more money. What changes as you spend more of it, hm?
Ditto. The question is valid, I’ve asked it numerous times and the left-liberal at the other end can never answer.
No Levi, you’re back to making sh*t up. The Laffer Curve is a curve, Levi. A CURVE. If you can’t even state or understand correctly what it is, you shouldn’t presume to criticize it.
Instead, you might ASK for someone to given an explanation. As we’re doing with you. Back on “stimulus”. Kindly explain to us rubes: WHY, if a $1.5 trillion deficit on a $3.5 trillion budget is good, is a $3 trillion deficit on a $5 trillion budget not better?
Krugman says it would be (i.e., that our “stimulus” / spending / deficit should be much larger). But then WHY, if a $3 trillion deficit on a $5 trillion budget would be good, would not a $10 trillion deficit on a $12 trillion budget be better?
See? It’s in the form of a question. We don’t understand your super-brilliant left-liberal theory that knows exactly when to say “when” (even though Krugman disagrees). So we’re asking. Here is another question for you, Levi: In over your head much?
Every time he posts, ILC. Every time he posts.
What was the point, during time of high unemployment, in the government shutting down hundreds of car dealerships (except those owned by women or blacks)?
Does anyone believe all of those 200,000 people are so indispensable that that the Republic would fall were they not on the job? How did the country get along before those positions were created?
Besides, I don’t recall Levi ever calling for Obama to end the drilling moratorium (>25,000 jobs losts), nor decrying the 2,000 jobs lost when the student loan industry was nationalized, or the thousands of coal-mining jobs lost because the administration is revoking mining licenses in WV. I guess the only jobs he thinks are worth creating or saving are those of Government bureaucrats.
It only works when you have capitalism i.e. free markets… which unfortunately we do NOT; the more so under Obama.
But, if you do have capitalism / free markets… then the magic is called “creative destruction”. It is famous. You can google it. The Marxists invented it originally as a slam, but Schumpeter realized it was a good thing and gave it a new meaning.
CBO says repealing ObamaCare would save $1.4 Trillion. Wow.
Levi – the problem with 200,000 more gubmint workers:
When the government is involved, we find that the cost-per-job is usually exorbitant. There are thousands of stories about this. The value added to the economy by most government work is negative: we’re poorer as a result.
That’s not to say that we don’t need government; we do. Government is overhead. It’s one thing to pay for national defense, some level of regulation, law enforcement, and so on. It’s another thing entirely to pay people to badger farmers over spilled milk, to hire IRS agents to monitor tanning salons (81, I think) or to buy the votes of one group by promising the earning of another group that’s yet to be born (which is immoral).
Levi illustrates the mindset of the Progressive Left pretty well. Does it matter if those 200,000 workers are doing anything useful — No, it’s irrelevant. Does it matter that we can’t afford those 200,000 new Government workers — No. All that matters is the Government gave them something and by gosh they are now entitled to it for the rest of their lives.
Sound about right?