Posted by
The CL Project on Monday, December 15, 2008 7:55:54 PM
A trillion here, a trillion there... pretty soon you're talking about real money.
Apparently, Team Obama is considering a plan to boost the recession-hit U.S. economy that could be far larger than previous estimates and might reach $1 trillion over two years. Obama aides and advisers have set $600 billion over two years as "a very low-end estimate."
So what will the stimulus bag of goodies look like? Word on the street is that the package will include an initial tax cut and a massive infusion of funds for roads, bridges, water systems, school repair, spreading broadband access, promoting health-care information technology, improving energy efficiency in buildings, renewable-energy projects, and assisting struggling state and local governments.
In other words, planting the seeds for everything he cares about: a green economy, universal health care, a labor resurgence, and big brother as benevolent private-sector “partner.” It is the community organizer’s ultimate dream.
The deepening recession creates the opportunity for federal intervention and government experimentation on a scale unseen since the New Deal -- and that is just the window Obama needs to enact the "change" he desires.
The infrastructure project alone would be the largest of its kind in a half-century. The idea being to revive the economy and create jobs for America's unemployed. But before Obama starts dumping cash into the giant money hole, he may want to consider the example of Japan in the 1990s and realize that huge public works projects often fail to revive national economies.
Then again when your goal is a restructuring of the American economy and the forging of a new relationship between government and people, why let historical anecdote get in your way.
As Charles Krauthammer recently pointed out, Obama was quite serious when he said he was going to change the world. And now he has a national crisis, a personal mandate, a pliant Congress, a desperate public — and, at his disposal, the greatest pot of money in galactic history
As Obama revealingly said just last week, “this painful crisis . . . provides us with an opportunity to transform our economy to improve the lives of ordinary people.” Transformation is his mission. Crisis provides the opportunity. The election provides him the power.