Actually, the administration has had a messaging problem on economic policy ever since its first months in office, when it went for a stimulus plan that many of us warned from the beginning was inadequate given the size of the economy’s troubles. You can argue that Mr. Obama got all he could — that a larger plan wouldn’t have made it through Congress (which is questionable), and that an inadequate stimulus was much better than none at all (which it was). But that’s not an argument the administration ever made. Instead, it has insisted throughout that its original plan was just right, a position that has become increasingly awkward as the recovery stalls.
And a side consequence of this awkward positioning is that officials can’t easily offer the obvious rebuttal to claims that big spending failed to fix the economy — namely, that thanks to the inadequate scale of the Recovery Act, big spending never happened in the first place.
But if they won’t say it, I will: if job-creating government spending has failed to bring down unemployment in the Obama era, it’s not because it doesn’t work; it’s because it wasn’t tried.
Time do deconstruct
"The administration has a messaging problem ... it has insisted throughout that its original plan was just right." Those who cannot or will not admit the errors of the past are likely to keep on committing them. But, should it be surprising that the original plan did not succeed? Who were the advisers tasked with developing the plan? From whence didst they cometh? Goldman Sachs would be one such place. Maybe these people just don't know sh-t from shinola? A reasonable hypothesis.
Why wasn't job-creating government spending even tried? Because the powers that be, the ones to whom the Bland One is beholden, the FIRE - financial, insurance, and real estate interests do not want government money going to the little people. FIRE demands the government money unto itself. Really. Truly. Madly. Deeply.
Q. E. D.
Barack Obama serves only his corporate masters. Had he not done so, had they not been assured that he would do so, he could not have risen to hold the highest elected political office in the land.
Politics 101 - follow the money, honey
