I have rethought going through with a campaign to help get the President’s jobs plan enacted as is.
From John Kerry’s web page:
Feedback on Our Budget
Recently, John Kerry asked constituents for their thoughts on how to combine long-term fiscal discipline in Washington with job-creating policies now. He set up a special contact form for you to share your thoughts with him. Follow this link to send in your thoughts!
I used the link to send him the following message:
The President’s plan is better than I expected, but it is still inadequate.
The people who say I should compromise say that I shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I have now realized that you and President Obama are allowing the expedient be the enemy of the adequate.
Another failure of an inadequate plan will kill the idea of Keynesian Stimulus for a generation.
Don’t you and President Obama do to the Democratic Party what Herbert Hoover did to the Republicans.
Beef up Obama’s plan before you have to vote No on it.
I used Senator Scott Brown’s contact web page to inform him of what I told Senator Kerry.
Think of this analogy. When you take anti-biotics to kill an infection, the doctor tells you to take the full dose even if the infection seems to go away before the dose is complete. If you don’t do that, you run the risk of leaving behind the bacteria that were able to survive the initial dose of anti-biotic. Not only have you left survivors, but you have killed off the bacteria with which they used to have to compete. Now the remnants are free to multiply and mutate without the control of the bacteria you did manage to kill off. These survivors of the initial dose are the most likely to mutate into a strain that can survive even the strongest and most prolonged dose of that particular anti-biotic, making that anti-biotic useless in the future. This is the history of the continuing need to come up with new anti-biotics.
If we allow the country to go on an incomplete dose of economic stimulus, what will be left in the aftermath may be worse than had we applied no stimulus at all. We might have a depression so bad and a political climate so mutated that no attempt to fix the problem with Keynesian stimulus will work. If the Democrats just walk away from the deal and make no attempt to fix the problem, we might be able to fix it later with an economy and political climate that has not grown resistant to Keynesian stimulus.
I’ll let my doctor cousins tell me if I am off base on this analogy. Would Obama without his inadequate program be following the Hippocratic oath to first do no harm?
My fear is that a “stimulus” plan will be passed that will be ineffective. If Obama has to come back for a third try, what then? After two failed attempts, the populace will be even more easily convinced that these types of programs don’t work.
What if, by some miracle, a more competent, progressive person were elected to the Presidency in the future? What chance would she or he have to try a stimulus plan?
Herbert Hoover’s legacy was to keep the Republicans out of power for a generation. What if Obama does that for the Democrats?
To win a tough negotiation, the other side has to know that you are willing to walk away from the deal. If they know that you need a deal at any price, then they really have you over a barrel. Or is that on a water board?
Well, good luck with that, Steve. But would the more than adequate be the enemy of the better than nothing? Anyway, if the Repubs approve anything it will probably be much less than adequate, so, better beef up what we have now? Next week they’ll talk about the deficit! Gad!