No one gets credit for this

When I think about a finan­cial recov­ery, the thing that excites me is the mil­lions of pre­vi­ously hard-working peo­ple who would go back to work. I would be excited for their fam­i­lies, and what an eco­nomic relief it would be for them.

Fam­i­lies could again have the essen­tials, maybe even a few lux­u­ries or take a vaca­tion. Chil­dren could afford to go to col­lege; even retire­ment would be a pos­si­bil­ity. I also think about the com­mu­ni­ties; work­ing peo­ple mean more tax rev­enue, and more tax rev­enue means bet­ter streets, schools and increased safety.

Per­haps way down the list in my excite­ment, if at all, would be the real­iza­tion that a finan­cial recov­ery would mean that Pres­i­dent Obama might get reelected.

Don’t get me wrong; at this point, and con­sid­er­ing the cur­rent list of Repub­li­can nom­i­nees, I am hop­ing Pres­i­dent Obama is reelected next year but I would never sac­ri­fice a finan­cial recov­ery, if there was one to be had, to ensure it. What­ever hap­pened to “team play­ers” and “I don’t care who gets the credit?” The cur­rent bunch of polit­i­cal lead­ers, on both sides, are so wor­ried that an oppos­ing idea might suc­ceed that every idea is met with dis­con­tent, spin and stalling.

An arti­cle recently caught my atten­tion which makes my point. The head­line read, “Get Ready for a July Rally,” writ­ten by Jim Jabak of MSN Money. In the arti­cle Jabak looks at the trend of July stocks and projects a July increase, which ini­tially offered some hope. But then Jabak looked ahead and wrote in pro­jec­tion of next year’s global economy:

“I expect this to be a wild year as politi­cians from Wash­ing­ton to Moscow to Bei­jing vie to buy pop­u­lar approval (if not actual votes). We’ve got a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Rus­sia — think Putin won’t do every­thing he can to make sure that vot­ers are happy? We’ve got a lead­er­ship tran­si­tion in China — think Jin­ping and the other new lead­ers jock­ey­ing for power as Wen steps down won’t do every­thing they can to make sure that China’s econ­omy doesn’t falter?”

Then Jabak tack­les the United States,

“And we’ve got a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in the United States. This is a huge wild card. Yes, the incum­bent will do every­thing he can to make sure unem­ploy­ment falls and growth speeds up, although it’s not exactly clear what Pres­i­dent Barack Obama will be able to do with Repub­li­cans in con­trol of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Repub­li­cans have a vested inter­est in see­ing the econ­omy con­tinue to strug­gle. At the least, they’ll be tempted to block any­thing that might give the pres­i­dent an eco­nomic suc­cess to talk about in his campaign.”

Michele Bach­mann, who is some­how emerg­ing as a seri­ous pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, said as much when she said she hoped higher unem­ploy­ment would improve her chances of win­ning the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Do you think Bach­mann is going to do any­thing now that would hurt her chances of win­ning? What she should have said is, “I hope the high rate of unem­ploy­ment decreases as soon as pos­si­ble, too many peo­ple have suf­fered for a long time, but if not, then I hope my ideas can help if I am elected.”

Sen­ate Minor­ity Leader Mitch McConnell essen­tially said the same thing, “I refuse to help Barack Obama get reelected by march­ing Repub­li­cans into a posi­tion where we have co-ownership of a bad econ­omy.” What McConnell really said, ignor­ing, of course, that Pres­i­dent Obama inher­ited a fail­ing econ­omy, is that a bad econ­omy is good for Repub­li­cans, peo­ple, and their fam­i­lies, can wait.

It is inter­est­ing that Repub­li­cans, who often do a bet­ter job of spin­ning polit­i­cal issues, are on the wrong side on the debt ceil­ing issue. Their staunch defense of tax reduc­tions for the top one per­cent, which is jeop­ar­diz­ing the United State’s credit rat­ing, gov­ern­ment pay­ments and social pro­grams, is nearly inde­fen­si­ble and show­ing the true col­ors of many in their party.

Repub­li­cans and the Tea Party have tried mak­ing this an ide­o­log­i­cal argu­ment about not rais­ing taxes and job cre­ation but the pub­lic is finally see­ing through this, espe­cially when the taxes being argued about are only those in the top one percent.

Repub­li­can defense of the top one per­cent, those mak­ing almost $2 mil­lion per year, is clearly about polit­i­cal sup­port, fundrais­ing and the taxes they pay, not about improv­ing the Amer­i­can econ­omy and not about the mid­dle and lower classes. Gov­ern­ment has got­ten smaller, hun­dreds of thou­sands of pub­lic jobs have been lost, yet the pri­vate sec­tor has been slow to add them, wait­ing per­haps until after the election.

Jabak antic­i­pates that any recov­ery will be frag­ile: “What really wor­ries me is that gov­ern­ments and cen­tral banks, hav­ing spent much of their ammu­ni­tion on the global finan­cial cri­sis in 2008 and 2009 – and not hav­ing pro­duced the eco­nomic growth nec­es­sary to reload their weapons, will have less, much less, to throw at any cri­sis that emerges in 2013.”

I think Jabak is right on point here. The stim­u­lus pack­age did more to save jobs than cre­ate them. The unem­ploy­ment rate over the last cou­ple of years would have been a lot worse had the stim­u­lus pack­age not been passed. How­ever, even as com­pa­nies recov­ered, even pros­pered, as many have, they have refused to hire new employ­ees, or even bring back some of those laid-off. They’ve real­ized that fewer employ­ees, plus increased sales, equals more profit for them and shareholders.

The eco­nomic future of the coun­try con­tin­ues to be of real con­cern, and I for one do not care whose plan works in ini­ti­at­ing its recov­ery. If a Repub­li­can can lead us to pros­per­ity, I would gladly sup­port him or her (last year I voted for Repub­li­can Tom Williams for county com­mis­sioner). What I do think is that it is time for the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans and cor­po­ra­tions to start pulling their weight and start giv­ing back to the coun­try that has given them so much. So far, Repub­li­cans have not embraced that ideology.

A shared sac­ri­fice, regard­less of who gets the credit…what a noble concept.

Posted by Rob Swindell on Jul 28 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.