Gilda Radner’s character from old Saturday Night Live shows, Emily Litella, was a hard-of-hearing commentator on the show’s Weekend Update segment.  She would, for example, go on and on with her outrage that the Supreme Court was considering a "deaf" penalty case, or with her support of "Youth in Asia".  When Chevy Chase nudged her and let her know that it was instead a "death" penalty case or "euthanasia", realizing she’d misheard the subject, she meekly turned back to the camera and gave her trademark line, "Never mind."

Apparently, Miss Litella went on to become our first woman President.

Confronting misgivings, even in his own party, President Barack Obama mounted a stout defense of his blueprint to overhaul the economy Thursday, declaring the national crisis is "not as bad as we think" and his plans will speed recovery.

Challenged to provide encouragement as the nation’s "confidence builder in chief," Obama said Americans shouldn’t be whipsawed by bursts of either bad or good news and he was "highly optimistic" about the long term.

The president’s proposals for major health care, energy and education changes in the midst of economic hard times faced skepticism from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, as senators questioned his budget outlook and the deficits it envisions in the middle of the next decade.

(Emphasis on the "Never mind" added.)  This is why many of us are skeptical of the hand of government trying to direct the economy.  We wind up with "cures", such as these massive spending debt packages, that could be worse than the disease.  Just ask a Democrat in the know.

Sen. Kent Conrad, the chairman of the Budget Committee called the track of future deficits "unsustainable" and singled out Obama’s proposal for adding $634 billion in health care spending over the next 10 years.

"Some of us have a real pause about the notion of putting substantially more money into the health care system when we’ve already got a bloated system," said Conrad, D-N.D.

"Unsustainable"?  I thought Obama was supposed to be the responsible, sustainable lifestyle kind of President. 

Now, frankly, I don’t know for sure if even this new analysis of the economy is correct, and there’s no doubt we’ve in the middle of a significant downturn right now.  The point is, rushing through a "fix", and especially a "fix" we’ll be decades paying for, should never, ever be done.  But cries from Washington Democrats, liberal bloggers and pundits that this had to be done now and be done big (with some still saying that it should be much bigger than it is) are irresponsible. 

The size of the "stimulus" is one thing.  The rush to do something, anything, is the worst kind of "government is the solution" thinking.

Related posts:

  1. A Winning Economic Policy
  2. The "Expiration Date" on Political Promises
  3. It’s a Nobel Laureate’s Prerogative to Change His Mind
  4. The Moral Lessons of the Economic Stimulus
  5. Another Reason To Be Against Big Government Programs

Filed under: Doug • Economics & Taxes • Government

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