Who’s this New Guy?
Earlier this week I listened to President elect Obama address congress to move swiftly to put together and a approve a new economic recovery package. Now that was to be expected but as I’m listening to the President elect I’m wonder who is this guy?
The ‘new’ Obama seems to have lost his optimistic outlook entirely. This new guy likes to talk about how we are at the edge of an economic abyss from which there may be no recovery. No recovery that is, unless congress approves his package.
The thing is that a package of incentives cannot do anything for the next 3 months and very little for the first half of the new year. More people will get laid off which will be painful. The housing market will not come back to life anytime soon. The big three auto dealers will be back in Washington DC shortly asking for a lot more money to survive.
However, what Obama won’t acknowledge is that there will be recovery without his package. And whether the economic recession we are in gets any worse or last any longer without it is debatable. What I do know (and I think the President elect does too) is that his job creation plans that have to do with infrastructure projects (yes folks we are talking about laying concrete for roads and bridges) won’t do anything for a single mother of 4 who gets laid off of her adminstrative job. I won’t do anything for the 48 year old father of 2 in college who can no longer make any money being a real estate agent. It just can’t help the hundreds of thousands of folks who are not physically capable of doing that labor.
So the bad news is that much of what gets included in this stimulus/recovery bill just won’t help us out and will just raise the deficit further. We are in for a grim year this year.
But we will recover because we are a huge economic force. Once the contraction stops - and it will - spending will slowly come back. And that will lead to job growth. We need to focus on just how vast this country is and how rich it is with not only natural resources but with a people who will raise to the occasion. Americans do not need a hand out. This country has survived worse and come back the stronger for it.