First SJ criticism of Obama

Joanie

Sorry but I tend to side with the Polisi-flubbed-it crowd on this. Barack also deserves some blame for the porkish flavor of the house bill..

I see two problem with the house bill.

1. Obama made a critical, Clinton-like, argument that these dollars were to be investments rather than expenditures. Unfortunately, much of the House bill is spent on current needs ... assuring that teachers are not fired, extending COBRE, extending unemployment, and decreasing, for ashort time the social security tax. These all make sense but they are tradtitional safety net measures not investments.

A truly silly example was the effort by Peolosi to reform Bush era law on birth control. This actually cost little or nothing BUT it looked like special interest legislation and any argument that this was a high priority of insuring future productivity was contrived.

Bottom line, Pelosi hurt the effort by making the investment idea look like an excuse to do what had to be done anyway.

2. The bill provides very little finding that can be recognized as investments. Almost no money is set for R&D, reforms of the investment tax credit are missing, there is nothing identifiable as VC, etc.

In part this is the result of a concatenation of two incompatible ideas .. investment and emergency. Look here in the PNW. We can almost hear the creaping rust in our transportation system. Boeing may end up leaving simply because they can not move anything from Everett to the Columbia, the UW is teetering on a leveraged edge not appropriate for a state school, our college level facilities are shrinking, etc. BUT, very little of this can be fixed by spending any amount of money over the next 24 months.

What I believe BHO needs to do is to educate the public as to the need for investment and separate that need form the serious but short term needs of a failed Bush economy. The investment part should not be a teo year package. To work it needs to be a long term plan that actually does improve our infrastructure and doers give the private sector the long term vision to reinvest in US.