What Does A Paula Poundstone Comedy Skit Have In Common With President Obama's Failed Economic Policies?

As I observe the Obama administration flail away at trying to "fix" the economy, I am reminded of an old Paula Poundstone comedy monologue/skit that she did several years ago. She was discussing that whenever you see a horrid television show, or a very bad movie, or a terrible television commercial, you need to remember that someone, somewhere actually wrote that bad idea down on a piece of paper. In fact, that idea was probably rewritten several times, from first draft to the final, wretched version. Some group of people at the television network, movie studio, or advertising agency thought that this final version was great, prior, of course, to it hitting reality and failing miserably. The original skit and the deriding of a bad Snickers commercial, even though we got the best of a bad idea, can be seen at the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulM4E08J8Lo&feature=related

The same can be said of Obama's economic revival ideas. Somewhere, someplace, someone actually wrote the following failed ideas down on a piece of paper. As with Ms. Poundstone's observations, these ideas probably went through several iterations until we got to the point where this administration thought they had the very best ideas. Until, of course, these ideas hit reality and failed miserably:

• Cash For Clunkers - did not result in incremental auto sales and just gave away taxpayer money to people that were likely to have purchased an auto anyway, with or without the taxpayer gift.
• Cash For Appliances and Cash for Caulkers - see Cash For Clunkers
• H.A.M.P - This program, which was supposed to help stretched homeowners stay in their homes and avoid foreclosure, was deemed a failure by the watchdog set up to track its results. The watchdog claimed that the program wasted $50 billion in taxpayer funds without making any kind o f significant progress towards its goal. (The Week magazine - September 3, 2010 issue.)
• TARP - unnecessary and a waste of hundreds of billions of dollars. While this program was passed under the Bush administration, Obama and most Democrats supported it.
• Economic Stimulus Program - another waste of hundreds of billions of dollars. Someone in the Obama administration wrote down the threat that if the stimulus was not implemented, unemployment could go to 8%. It was implemented, and unemployment soared past 8% to the 10% range. The stimulus program wasted billions of dollars on programs that had nothing to do with job creation and wasted many more billions of dollars on infrastructure improvement programs that were not in need of improvement. For example, the Associated Press investigated stimulus bridge expenditures in late 2009 to find that about half of the bridges that underwent refurbishment were not in need of refurbishment. Who wrote down that fine idea, fix things that do not need to be fixed?
• Perpetual Extension of Unemployment Benefits - by continually extending unemployment benefits, the national debt gets larger and larger and the incentive to go back to work gets smaller and smaller. Thus, the unemployment rate never changes but the national debt level does. Why go to work if you can get anywhere from $400 to over $500 a week for not working. Why work for $10 an hour to make $400 a week when you can do nothing and still get $400 a week? I understand the need for unemployment benefits, the need to help someone over a tough patch. However, at some point that help has to end. Today I looked for a part time job in the Tampa Bay market on Craigslist. Over a thousand vacant job listings and postings came back. There are jobs out there.
• Bush Tax Cuts - I believe that the Obama administration, at one point in time, wanted to roll back the Bush tax cuts for all Americans. Under political pressure, Obama is now digging in his heels and saying only the rich should get their tax cuts repealed and higher tax rates installed. Great idea, who wrote that one down? Who thought that it would be great to take billions of dollars of disposable income out of the fragile market and economy, disposable income that could have been spent on movie tickets, new cars, restaurant visits, vacations, and other job producing activities?
• New Infrastructure Stimulus Package - the latest idea that this administration has obviously written down is to spend another $20 billion in stimulus funding, this time exclusively on infrastructure improvement. Several problems with this concept. First, we saw from the first stimulus program that funds were spent to fix/refurbish infrastructure that was not in need of fixing. How do we know that this will not occur under this program, resulting in much more wasted taxpayer money? Second, let's assume that the $20 billion is actually authorized and creates many high quality jobs at an annual rate of $50,000 a year? That would result in the one year creation of 400,000 jobs (absolute best case and these jobs would likely disappear after the money ran out after a year), while almost 15 million Americans are out of work. Thus, this idea might reduce the number of unemployed by only 2-3% (400,000/15,000,000).

Paula Poundstone's observation is so true: just because an idea is written down, and rewritten several times, does not make it a good idea, call it the Snickers Effect.

What should be done about the economy? Several good idea come to mind:

1. You must keep as much disposable income as possible in the economy to spur sales and spending, that is what would create jobs. Steps 3 and 4 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" covers this area of tax rate reduction as does Step 10 under Social Security reform.
2. You need to remove the uncertainty that the Obama administration has injected into the economy and the way businesses think and plan, uncertainty that includes how much more they will have to pay for health care taxes under Obama Care, how much more they will have to pay in taxes under Obama's inane Cap and Trade carbon program, how much more they will have to pay in taxes if the Bush tax cuts are not renewed, etc. Given all of this uncertainty, businesses and individuals are hunkering down and will continue to do so until there is some clear cut plans, strategic thinking, and leadership coming out of the political class from BOTH parties.
3. You must reduce the size of the Federal government and the outstanding and outrageous debt levels, that this administration is incurring, in order to free up capital and income to grow the economy. This blog has suggested several ways to reduce the size of the Federal government that easily saved $200 - $300 billion a year. These ideas range from bringing home almost all foreign deployed U.S. troops, cleaning up the massive fraud in Medicare and other government programs, and reducing the Federal headcount, a headcount that has grown considerably since Obama came into office. The Cato Institute is currently going through each Federal Cabinet department, one by one, and finding a remarkable amount of budget and waste that can be cut out of the bureaucracy that is the Federal government. The Concord Coalition, a non-partisan organization, is about to embark on a national road show to discuss and identify areas for waste reduction in the Federal government. This coalition is chaired by a former Republican Senator (Rudman) and Democratic Senator (Kerry). Steps 1 and 44 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" provide a plan for accomplishing this need.

The current flailings of this administration to come up with just one worthwhile economic idea indicates a lack of an overall strategic plan for fixing the economy. This administration just keeps throwing out tactical programs that do not fit into an overall integrated strategic structure. As a result, they do not understand the root causes of our economic problems and cannot address those root causes. Until the political class starts planning and worrying about America and not their political futures or "energizing their political bases", they will be no better than a Paula Poundstone comedy skit. Unfortunately, for us, the American public, the joke will continue to be on us.

Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/