Obama’s Economic “Triage”
posted at 12:06 pm on October 3, 2009 by Howard Portnoy
[ Economics ] printer-friendly
Think of the economy as a hospital emergency room filled with sick and injured patients. That’s how the White House is viewing it, judging from the euphemism they have coined to mask plans for a second stimulus. Don’t call it stimulus 2, they insist. Call it “economic triage.”
This not terribly clever circumlocution — which will in all likelihood be meaningless to the great masses anyway — is code for the administration’s desperation strategy to stanch the bleeding, a promise identical to one made for the first three-quarter trillion-dollar stimulus.
One group at whom the new proposal is specifically aimed is the 5.4 million Americans currently out of work. These stats include 450,000 new unemployment claims filings over the past 27 weeks. A second target is boosting home sales.
The White House faces major problems in getting members of his own party, let alone the electorate, to support more government spending, especially in light of the urgency with which Obama hawked the first stimulus and its relative failure to date. Despite warnings that the unemployment rate would reach 8 percent unless the stimulus was passed, the current rate is currently at 9.8 percent, the highest in 26 years.
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I think unmitigated disaster would be a more accurate description. I think the evidence will show that porkulus actually de-stimulated the economy by tipping us into a debt black-hole for as far as we can see…the only way out seems to be confiscatory tax rates.
AUINSC on October 3, 2009 at 1:15 PM
If the first stimulus did not help getting jobs, lending money to businesses who give jobs, how in the name of a person with a working brain think MORE money will help? My brain is just hurting at what bho, team, and the dc bunch are doing! How in the world are going to stop this? I know calling our dc bunch, sending e-mails, faxes, letters, or whatever has not done squat to stop this. If all this crud gets passed, 2010 will be too late for our Republic, IMO.
L
letget on October 3, 2009 at 2:30 PM
AUINSC: I am no more a fan of this administration or its antics than you are, but unmitigated disaster is a little extreme at this point. The job loss has been slowing, which many economists — not just those who work for the administration — see as a positive sign.
letget: I agree with you, but the phone calls, letters, etc. may not be necessary. As I noted in my post, he’s going to have an incredibly hard time persuading Democrat Congress members to go along with another splurge. Self-preservation will deter a large number of them.
Howard Portnoy on October 3, 2009 at 3:19 PM
Of course, the whole point of “triage” is that some things don’t get done and some folks are left to die.
It doesn’t seem like an accident that Obama’s administration keeps using metaphors of this kind. The Obama political theme is triage. And just as military combat creates the need for triage where there was no need before, so the Obama worldview dictates that triage is required.
If Americans were as unfettered by regulation as we were even 40 years ago, our economy would probably be recovering by creating jobs, which is always done overwhelmingly by small business. (70% of all jobs created, no matter when you sample, are created by small business.)
But instead, we are regulated to the point that triage is, because of this artificial and politically-created situation, now “required.”
Government regulation: a method of putting in government’s hands the decision who’s worth “saving” and who’s not.
J.E. Dyer on October 3, 2009 at 4:01 PM
Excellent point, J.E. The question here is who or what gets left to die, the answer to which I think is small business. Rescuing that vital sector has never been on Obama’s radar, even though as you point out correctly, it is the key to economic recovery. Dr. Obama’s priority in triage are patients with self-inflicted wounds (people who bought homes they couldn’t afford) and people with cuts and scratches (those who are newly out of work and could certainly survive a lot longer than the economy as a whole, which has failing vital signs. OK, I think I’ve sufficiently milked that metaphor for all it’s worth.)
In the meantime, the whole metaphor of triage is wrong. The firsts stimulus could have been used for triage, but instead it was loaded with pork to gratify a lot of Democrats and some Republicans.
Howard Portnoy on October 3, 2009 at 4:23 PM
Extending unemployment benefits once again seems practically a gimme with the demos track record and no sign of an employment uptick. Further ‘triage’ could be creating a public jobs workfare system for those unemployed the longest. What could they call that?…hmm, ‘The National Civilian Security Force’.
C’mon, this is their regularly scheduled program. If they can squeeze in some pork, all the better in their view.
GnuBreed on October 3, 2009 at 7:32 PM