July 30, 2009
"We acknowledge now with President Obama, that we have made mistakes," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on her recent trip to India, accepting responsibility for America's role in global warming. Clinton was obviously pointing a finger of blame at the unrepentant Bush administration. But while Obama and his surrogates have traveled the globe apologizing for what he perceives as other people's mistakes, he's shown a marked reluctance to shoulder the blame for his own misjudgments.
Obama could start by owning up to the failure of his ill-conceived stimulus package.
Five months ago, the president authorized the expenditure of nearly $800 billion - about $500 billion in direct spending and the remainder in tiny rebates for Social Security recipients and lower-income workers. Administration officials and Democratic congressmen insisted that, unlike any Republican "trickle-down" stimulus generated by supply-side tax cuts, their outlays would quickly reach the intended recipients and get the economy moving again.
As of July 17, only $67.4 billion of the money had actually reached anyone.
Meanwhile, more than 2.5 million jobs have been lost and
unemployment has risen to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent. The president can always claim that things would have been worse without the stimulus, but this is a cop-out. Unemployment, for instance, is worse than the administration said it would be without the big spending measure. Obama may not be at fault for causing the economic downturn, but his stimulus package clearly has not delivered the short-term economic spark he and his allies promised.
And very little of the stimulus money is promoting long-term growth. Reports abound of stimulus grants for questionable research and arts projects. Only $27 billion was allocated to infrastructure, and that includes many projects of doubtful value, such as the infamous turtle-tunnel in Florida. Meanwhile, with the federal government's encouragement, states are spending millions on billboards, $2,000 orange construction signs ("Project Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act"), and pricey public relations consultants to advertise the stimulus package itself. Fully $18 million is being spent on a website that will not begin tracking the projects online until at least mid-October.
The slow pace of stimulus spending, while disappointing to the program's architects, offers the president an opportunity - if he is willing to admit his mistake. At any time, he can ask Congress to rescind the package and return the remaining $600 billion in unallocated funds to taxpayers. Not only would this help cushion the recession, it would also demonstrate that America's leader takes responsibility for what happens on his own watch.
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