August 26, 2009

It's official: Obamanomics has failed

By William Tate

The Obama administration on Tuesday acknowledged that Obamanomics, the dismal science of spending other people's money as fast as possible, honed with ward bosses and union kingpins on Chicago's South Side, has failed.

They did so, not in so many words and probably without knowing it, while hammering Americans with a devastating and demoralizing one-two blow -- one a sucker punch, the other below the belt.

With the sycophants in the Obama press corps distracted while rubbing elbows with the Obamas and other rich folk on the Vineyard, the O Team threw their sucker punch: officially announcing that the federal budget deficit next year will be nearly 20% more than in their first forecast made just last May, and over the next ten years will be two trillion dollars more than they had predicted.

That's two million million dollars more than Obama had forecast. Just 90 days ago.

Oops.

Even ballpark hunches should be closer than that.

Obama's estimate of the ten-year federal deficit has increased almost 30% from his first quarterly forecast to his second. How much further off will it be in six months? In a year? By the end of his term?

Yet, this is the same genius who is now promising that Obamacare will be revenue neutral, that Medicare won't be raided, and that seniors needn't worry about how end-of-life care under a government imposed plan will be affected by Washington's ability to pay.

The O Team's media wing immediately spun into damage control, with the AP Tuesday quoting Budget Director Peter Orszag's contention that another trillion dollars spent on health care would somehow help balance the budget. "I know there are going to be some who say that this report proves that we can't afford health reform; I think that has it backwards."

The below the belt punch landed shortly afterwards. The U.S. economy, under Obama's stewardship, will contract at 2.8% this year, more than doubling what Obama had predicted in May. The Obamaconomists predict that the recession will end next year, projecting that the economy will grow by 2% in 2010, down nearly 40% from their projection made 90 days ago.

They're beginning to look like the gang that couldn't add straight.

Especially when they make their specious argument, as they did Tuesday, that the economy would be worse off without Obama's porkulus package. Always without evidence. They must use the same Ouija board -- or maybe it's a crystal ball -- that they use to figure out how many jobs Obama has 'saved.'

What makes this such a low blow is that they assume, while the Obamas holiday with the likes of Meg Ryan, Ted Danson, Reese Witherspoon and other celebrities, that we, the hoi polloi, can't figure out that there is evidence which actually disproves their contention.

There is a baseline, of sorts, with which to compare Obamanomics.

Last spring Obama implored other countries to implement their own budget-busting, Obamanomics-style stimulus packages -- a would-be Europorkulus, if you will.

Fortunately for them, these countries didn't listen.

Despite being harder hit, Europe has shown signs of already coming out of the global recession, revising their economic numbers upward, while Team Obama marks U.S. figures downward.

France and Germany actually exited the recession last quarter. The leaders of both nations specifically and publicly rejected Obama's cries for Europorkulus. "It would be irresponsible to chose another policy, which would increase our country's indebtedness without having more infrastructure and increased competitiveness in the end," French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said at the time.

Yes, even the French have been more fiscally responsible in dealing with the recession than the Obama administration and the Democrat directorate in Congress.

And even though "Germany, with its heavy exports dependence, has been particularly badly hit by the global recession," its economy, too has turned the corner. Citizens of Germany should be glad that Chancellor Merkel didn't heed the call to resort to Obamanomics.

Dow Jones notes:

"The rebound of Europe's economic engine suggests the region is joining the recovery under way in China and increasingly elsewhere in Asia, exemplified by India's announcement on Wednesday that industrial production in June rose nearly 8 percent from a year earlier...

'We're used to the U.S. leading the way to recovery, but this time we're having to look eastwards to Asia and to a homegrown recovery in Europe,' said Julian Callow, chief European economist at Barclays Capital in London."

Earlier this year, Callow told UPI, "While the magnitude of stimulus has been much less in Europe's case, the stimulus has been getting much better traction in Europe than in the United States."

Obama's apologists in the media will no doubt note that European economies differ from that of the United States in a number of ways. If so, this leaves them with a horrifying Hobson's choice of their own making. Either:

*Barack Obama showed alarming ignorance of economics when he suggested that other nations adopt his budget-busting stimulus measures despite those differences,

*or Barack Obama showed alarming ignorance of economics in ramming through his budget-busting, economic-recovery-stalling porkulus package here,

*or both.

Either way, Obamanomics has failed. Countries that rejected it have turned the economic corner, even ended the recession, while the U.S. economy continues to contract.

And these people now want to 'fix' the health care system?

Could someone, please, hand me an aspirin?

William Tate is an award-winning journalist and author