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President Obama is not providing the leadership needed to repair America's flailing economy
NY Daily News ^ | July 10th 2011 | Masthead Editorial
Posted on July 10, 2011 9:46:47 PM EDT by neverdem
In case you were confused, that was President Obama who spoke Friday after the release of an extraordinarily dismal employment report, and not Charles Dickens' classic character Wilkins Micawber.
Beset by the vicissitudes of life, the ineffectual Micawber fell back on hope, endlessly declaring that "something will turn up" to better his lot. Obama offered little else in the face of America's persistent inability to create jobs while more than 14 million people are unemployed.
He spoke of passing trade agreements, improving patent regulations, investing in infrastructure work and extending a payroll tax cut. While all are worthy ideas, they amounted to a pale imitation of a program to spark an economy that is minus 7 million jobs and last month added an atom-sized 18,000.
Obama's responses to monthly job tallies have become a picture of presidential leadership falling far short of the crisis at hand.
In May, after a slightly more robust jobs report, he said, "We are regaining our footing."
In June, after the employment picture slumped back, he said, "I don't want to pretend like everything is solved."
And now, in July, he declared: "We still have a long way to go and a lot of work to do to give people the security and opportunity they deserve."
What he doesn't have is a coherent, politically viable rescue plan. The big stimulus package - which, at very best, prevented worse catastrophes - is dead and buried, and the Federal Reserve's huge and unprecedented push to keep interest rates low is finished.
In other words, with the government going ever deeper into unsustainable debt, Obama appears flat out of ammunition. Far too belatedly, he's come around to negotiating what's advertised as a deal to cut the federal deficit by a whopping $4 trillion over 10 years.
It is said that everything is on the table, including Social Security and Medicare, as everything would have to be if the U.S. is to regain fiscal sanity. The particulars are as yet hidden.
Most clearly known is that Obama went on a jag about eliminating tax breaks for corporate jets as a way to beat the Republicans into raising revenue. They will have to come up with money in the end, and this bit of fat-cat sweetness should go.
But Obama played to the cheap seats in putting a $3 billion-a-year measure at the center of a $4 trillion effort on which the fate of economy hinges, along with the futures of the entitlements on which older Americans depend.
What Obama needs to do is lead Congress toward a bipartisan deal that provides sweeping, long-term deficit reduction, along with tax reform, along with smart short-term strategies for job creation. Those are the demands of his job - the one he wants to keep.
Lmfao. NYDN endorsed this pofs in 2008.
