Catastrophe - Dick Morris [9]
For example, of the $28 billion to be spent on road construction projects, only $9.6 billion will be spent by 2020.32 And of the $16.8 billion for renewable energy, only $2.5 billion will be spent in 2009.33 Precisely what good spending so many years from now will do for today’s economy is a mystery.
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TAKING HIS TIME: WHEN OBAMA’S STIMULUS WILL BE SPENT
Fiscal Year Amount Spent
2009 $185 billion
2010 $399 billion
2011 $134 billion
2012 $36 billion
2013 $28 billion
2014 $22 billion
2015* $5 billion
Source: Congressional Budget Office.
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But in Washington no one asks such questions. It’s much easier just to vote yes.
IS OBAMA’S PROGRAM SOCIALISM?
In our era of breathless, hyperventilated politics, we often attach easy labels to our politicians without worrying too much about whether they’re truly justified. In the 1950s, anyone who leaned the slightest bit to the left was pilloried as a Communist; any liberal legislation, including civil rights and Medicare, was condemned as “creeping socialism.”
So it’s wise to ask: Is it unjust to call Barack Obama a “socialist”?
No. He’s earned it.
Historically, the adjective “socialist” has referred to people who believe that the government should own the means of production. As we’ll see later, Obama may indeed be deliberately angling to take over the financial sector, giving him an unparalleled opportunity to spread his influence throughout the economy. But he has yet to give any evidence of wanting to take all of private industry and put it under public ownership.
In modern geopolitics, however, the term “socialist” refers broadly to the Social Democratic ideology followed by the left-leaning political parties of Western Europe, who want to expand the role of government in their countries. They want to establish a broader cradle-to-grave social welfare system and to widen the influence of public institutions.
The best shorthand to determine where a nation is on the capitalist/socialist scale is to measure how much of its economy is in the public sector—in other words, what percentage of its GDP comes from government spending. By this measure, the United States has ranked well to the right of almost every other major industrialized country in the world, with the sometime exception of Japan.
The following list compares prominent nations in the proportion of their GDPs that go to government:
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TOTAL GOVERNMENT SPENDING AS A PERCENTAGE OF GDP
Sweden 57.0%
France 54.0%
Italy 48.6%
Netherlands 47.1%
Germany 47.5%
United Kingdom 43.7%
Canada 40.1%
Japan 37.5%
United States 36.4%
Source: Forbes.
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These data, of course, predate the Obama administration. To measure the impact his program on our standing in the socialist landscape, let’s do some simple math:
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HOW OBAMA IS MAKING THE UNITED STATES A SOCIALIST DEMOCRACY
Now compare this table with the preceding one. Whereas U.S. government spending once accounted for 36.4 percent of our economy, it is now rising to 49 percent—sending us soaring past Britain and Germany and nestling in right under France—the very model of a modern socialist democracy!
So when it comes to Barack Obama’s spending programs, “socialist” is no political slur. It’s a simple description.
THE STIMULUS PACKAGE THAT DOESN’T STIMULATE
With so much of the spending in his program deferred until years from now, Obama’s stimulus package won’t really do much to stimulate the economy. Rather, it will create a whole new set of problems for our country down the road. In two or three years, it is likely to create massive inflation, which will necessitate a new, government-induced recession to get prices back in check.
Obama’s stimulus bill was a spending program, not an economic recovery program. And