TheLoop21.com

By: Lenny McAllister (Add to your loop)
Wed, 12/16/2009 - 09:31

President Obama is asking for an additional $150 million in stimulus money.

The latest talks on a stimulus package for jobs and “continuing to spend our way out of this recession” smacks of the tax-and-spend liberalism many expect from Democrats, but is it really the right direction?

In February, the Democratic supermajority – led by a post-partisan President Obama – told the country that there was a great need for the nearly-$800 billion stimulus package proposed by congressional leaders. Despite the opposition from Republicans throughout Capitol Hill, without passage of the bill, the economy would stagnate, allowing unemployment to creep over 8 percent and disallowing the American economy from helping both Main Street and Wall Street simultaneously.

Afterwards, it was hinted by Speaker Pelosi that another stimulus package may be necessary. At the time, I noted this on the airwaves, if Democratic leaders were saying in February and March that the spending would not be enough by already asking for more money, then why should we expect spending by the government to be the answer to our economic woes?

 The reply?

There was no way that Congress would even consider more spending in Washington after the stimulus package in February. Besides, wouldn’t $800 billion find its way to creating jobs for everyday Americans, just as Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and others repeatedly said?

Yet, here we sit in December, listening to President Obama asking for another $150 billion in federal spending to “spend our way out of this recession," even as Americans are losing jobs consistently proves the first stimulus hasn’t been effective as promised by Democrats.

So, when is enough enough? Wasn’t the first stimulus package a necessary evil to rid us of this crisis?

The same talk of stimulus money going toward highway construction and infrastructure development from February is back today, only now there has been a precedent that the funds will not see the light of day quickly enough to save and create jobs at the rate promised. Coupled with this new promise is a track record showing that this administration has a knack for overestimating “jobs saved or created” by the first stimulus, forcing us to question its true effectiveness.

Further, this past year shows that big players still have the final say-so in Washington, as more money has gone toward big players such as Bank of America and AIG than it has toward the everyday American losing health care, full-time employment, and his home – all this during the Obama Era where Washington was “going to change how we do things.”

Some change – and the same can now be applied to Democrats.

The pragmatist presidential candidate of 2008 has quickly morphed back into the tax-and-spend liberal his opponents said he was in just a small matter of time – and with poor results to boot. With “positive” news on the employment front being an official 10 percent unemployment rate (it's 17 percent when you include under-employed and discouraged candidates while the number shoots even higher in many states for African-Americans under the first Black president), the spending priorities of this administration and its supermajority alliance are not aligned with what truly creates and sustains jobs – and subsequently, prosperity – in America.

Spending billions to patch gaping holes in our society will not provide the sustainability that private intervention and personal innovation does to benefit a wider range of Americans economically and socially. As we have seen in cities throughout the nation, from the Great Society movement to the 2009 TARP plan, big government solutions continue to yield relatively small results for the people it allegedly represents.

As it always has been with tax-and-spend government, the spending has come, so we know that the taxing is coming. With the continued disappointments in communities, the job fronts, and the collective confidence in America, the next time we hear Democrats asking for more money for big-government domestic solutions, are we finally at a point of time collectively to ask:

When is enough enough?

Lenny McAllister is a political commentator and author of the book, “Diary of a Mad Black PYC (Proud Young Conservative),” available at Lenny's Diary and Amazon. Follow him on Twitter and at www.lennymcallister.com where McAllister’s weekly video commentary can be found.

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