The US in the course of the eight years of the Bush Administration and the Republican led Congress has made us a debtor nation. I will say it again: The Bush-Republican led administration sold out our nation to foreign investors making us a debtor nation. Bush-Republican "Lone Ranger" approach left our nation "Tonto (silly)" in debt.
What is left of the economy the Bush Era Republican majority (now the minority) are slowly pivoting the responsibility of the economy onto the President Obama. The truth is the Republican's and Bush are solely responsible for the current crisis we face both militarily and economically.
The security question we should be asking is: "Are we as a nation more secure in light of the Bush/Republican economic sellout and economic catastrophe of 2008?" The answer in my mind is unequivocally, No! If military security hinges on our ability to raise, produce, and reconstitute our economy then the defense of our nation is treading on thin ice. All thanks to Bush-Republican sell out policies of their administration to fund an unwarranted war, and if the country does not rebound, then history will mark the Bush-Republican era, as a failure.
No matter where we are now or four years from now if our economy is not better by 2012 it certainly will not rest on the hands of President Obama. Realistically it took FDR three terms and the destruction of Europe to make our economy humm and grow. It took Clinton two terms to create record setting job growth, and economic solvency. It will take President Obama just as long.
It is completely the fault of Bush and his Republican co-horts, and if President Obama fails to revive the economy it will certainly not be because of his lack of effort, or the democrat lack of effort, but the blame will lie squarely on the shoulders of the party of NO, the GOP, the "GOPNO's," the people who at every turn said NO to President Obama.
Who wished his failure for their political gain. The "GOPNO's" will realize one thing that the tree will lay where it falls, and when it falls it will directly fall on them crushing them for being "DO-NOTHINGS" wishing our nation and our President's demise. The public will remember who never extended their hands, who never rolled up their sleeves, and provided the all important effort to join forces to pull our nation, out of the pit the GOP and President Bush has let it fall into.
Our stability has been squandered by unrestricted bloating of the public sector by Bush Republican's and by borrowing heavily or selling out America to foreign investors in China, and Europe. This borrowing has turned us into a debtor nation, inefficient, and unresponsive to the changing world environment and economy. Led by "lazy-faire"privileged pugilists who have fought, at every phase to strip every sense of equal opportunity and destroyed the highest possible value of American pride in the American Dream.
Because we have trillion dollar deficits with a capital "T," the emphasis of crisis is even more daunting and dramatic than a million or a billion dollar deficit, but the solution is the same. The Economic approach doesn't change, the basics of economic problem solving is essentially the same, and the mode attack towards large deficits is essentially the same as it was during the Clinton years or in FDR's era, only know the scale and enormity of the problem breaks new ground, because we are in the trillions, but nonetheless the sure footed principles of economics that pulled us out of the Great Depression, and Reagan's 1980's recession in the 1990's can pull us out now.
Relying on tested, tried, and true economic principles to attack the growing trillion dollar deficit will assuage the widespread anxiety the Republican's are trying to spread in sensationalistic attacks on our worst fear of economic insolvency.
So what can the past tell us about the future: Dr. Milton Freidman and Edward Nell, a Malcom B. Smith Professor of Economics, at the New School for Research in New York City wrote an article in 1994, published by the
New York Review of Books titled:
How Dangerous is the Deficit? An Exchange. Here both agreed on one thing:
PROFESSOR NELL WROTE:
Moreover, included in the US measure is the highest ratio of defense spending to GNP of any advanced nation. This means that excluding defense, we have by far the smallest public sector plus transfer system, in relation to GNP, in the developed world. Moreover our public sector has grown more slowly than that of any other developed nation. Could it be that many of our problems arise because our government is spending too little, in relation to GNP, rather than too much? Can we really manage the problems of a modern economy with less government participation than other nations require? Our social and economic statistics do not paint an encouraging picture.
These issues call for analysis and interpretation. Yet in public political discussion it is all too commonly assumed that government spending must be reduced further. However, recent studies have provided evidence that public investment in education, R&D and infrastructure will add more to future GNP than private spending, and further is likely to stimulate private productive investment. Far from trying to curb or cut government spending, the Clinton Administration needs to do just what Professor Friedman apparently fears—"…deliver…little if any deficit reduction, but instead [provide us with] a big increase in domestic spending, financed by a combination of new taxes and defense cuts…"
DR. FREIDMAN RESPONDED:
I supported President Clinton's deficit reduction package (indeed, I argued in these pages for a more aggressive program than the President's) not merely because I believe increased investment is essential to achieving productivity growth and with it a rising standard of living but also, and importantly, because I share the President's assessment that on average the US economy will be near to full employment during the period in question.
For example, I suggested in Day of Reckoning that President Reagan's tax cuts and greater military spending not only did not crowd out US private investment during the high-unemployment years of 1981–1984 but probably crowded in some investment by increasing overall economic activity and hence people's incomes and their demand for many products.
In the end, I was therefore pleased that Congress passed the President's program. No one likes paying higher taxes, of course, or doing without the programs curtailed by cuts in government spending. But I believe that reducing the government's borrowing, and so increasing our country's investment, is the surest way we know to begin to correct the dual problem of declining average living standards and widening inequalities about which I have previously written here.
The answer is... not to stop government spending but to stop government borrowing, and reign in the government bureaucracy, which the Bush-Republicans created. They sold out our nation, our nest egg's and our children inheritance to foreign banks and foreign countries, and placed our overall security on the most untenable ground ever.
What President Obama needs to do is stop government borrowing to attack the deficit, and pay off the foreign debt, ASAP. President Obama must continue his full court press and pass the twin reform of both the energy and health sectors and achieve the economies of scale and energy indepence that are so large a part of our present and future GNP. President Obama must continue to invest heavily, and even take a more aggressive approach to implementing the public investment in education, R&D and infrastructure that will add more to future GNP than private spending will ever accomplish on its own, and which is further likely to stimulate private productive investment well into our childrens future.
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