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EDITORIAL
Slush fund
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Updated: Apr. 10, 2012 | 10:54 a.m.
Economic recovery? Only 19 percent of American CEOs expect to increase their work forces in the next six months, while 31 percent are planning to downsize, according to a Business Roundtable survey of executives released Tuesday.
But like an idiot insisting he can still put out the fire if only he's allowed to splash it with more gasoline, President Obama last week promised to "create more jobs" through another round of tax-and-borrow "stimulus" funding -- with at least part of the funds coming from leftover Wall Street bailout money.
The Troubled Asset Relief Program -- the $700 billion operation signed into law by President George W. Bush and then used by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to "incentivize" many financial firms to take taxpayer money whether they wanted it or not -- will end up costing $200 billion less than planned, Mr. Obama explained, allowing him to divert some of the money to small-business relief.
"This time, the president hopes to do for small businesses what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did for home mortgages," comments professor and blogger Don Morris, at docstalk.blogspot.com. "Specifically, he wants to create a new $30 billion 'Small Business Lending Fund' which will loan money to banks with assets under $10 billion at favorable new rates, as long as they comply with a slew of new regulations designed to incentivize them to loan that money to small businesses," Mr. Morris explains. "Never mind that a recent poll of small business owners by the National Federation of Independent Businesses ranked 'finance and interest rates' as the second to last most important problem facing their business."
The president's proposed new "Crisis Tax" on big banks "has nothing to do with recovering unpaid taxpayer TARP money and everything to do with finding a new source of revenue to help cover up the Obama administration's massive new spending increases," Mr. Morris explains. "But more debt and more regulation will not create new jobs."
A new Gallup poll reports 57 percent of Americans are worried there will be too much government regulation of business; only 24 percent say the government should become more involved in regulating and controlling business. But that's exactly what the President's new "Small Business Lending Fund" does.
The same NFIB poll that showed borrowing costs as the second-least important problem small businesses face also identified taxes as their second-biggest problem and government regulation and red tape as their third-biggest beef. (Top of the list? Customers just not buying enough.)
Republicans quite properly pounced on Mr. Obama's comments, arguing that using "surplus" bailout funds for anything other than paying down the debt would be illegal, given the way TARP was written.
"The president ... refused to put a price tag on these new 'stimulus' initiatives, instead proposing to turn TARP into a slush fund for politicians and continue Washington Democrats' unprecedented deficit-spending binge," House Minority Leader John A. Boehner told The Washington Times.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., pointed out the TARP money is a Treasury line of credit. Because it's not traditional government spending, it can't just be diverted.
Indeed. How about slashing both taxes and government programs, using both TARP repayments and the leftover "stimulus" funds to pay down the debt, and instead letting investors in the free market decide where jobs should be created, and by whom?
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Ah, for all those rabid right wingers out there; let the tears begin:
"Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- For all the concern over the $1.6 trillion U.S. budget deficit and record debt load, the dollar is as valuable now as 35 years ago.
Measured against a basket of currencies from the Group of 10 nations proportioned by how they trade against each other, the greenback is up about 3 percent since 1975, according to Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Currency Indexes. That was four years after the Bretton Woods agreement, set up in 1944 to link currencies to the price of gold, collapsed. The U.K. pound has dropped 34 percent and the Canadian dollar has fallen 6 percent."
So what you got here, is the authoritative source saying that the rabid right wing is wrong.
Wow!
Bush overspent. Obama increased spending by $1 trillion.
There is plenty of credit available for businesses to expand and hire, but there are few takers. Job creators and wealth creators are simply afraid of what Obama may do next!
Magara:
Check your post; you never asked any questions.
I did though, I asked you, or anyone else for that matter who claimed that everything was ok until the Democrats "took over". I asked you, or anyone else, to cite a specific bit of legislation that the republican party or the republican president didn't agree with, that the Democrats passed alone (as they have been required to do since President Obama has been elected) which had any impact on our economy.
If you can't it seems disingenuous to me to argue that it was the 2006 election that had anything to do with the economic direction the country took between 2006-2008.
And, you will note, that I didn't blame bush for the problems, what I said was that greed was the problem and his contribution was limited to NOT acting to protect the economy.
Patrick, you are not answering the question. What laws did Republicans and Bush pass without Democrat support? At that time, none. Ted Kennedy, Hillary, Obama, et. al., ENACTED the legislation for TARP and the prescription D plan. Bush and the Republicans could not have done it without the full support of the Democrats, and that is EXACTLY the type of legislation they love, the kind they are fully endorsing right now in triplicate! And Bush DID try to get oversight of Fannie and Freddie, something Democrats were completely against.
Blame Bush all you want for the downfall--he played a part--but it was a Democrat Congress and they only passed legislation that they WANTED. They can't blame that on Bush forever.
"This time, the president hopes to do for small businesses what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did for home mortgages,"
We know how that came out. It singlehandedly caused the highest foreclosure rate of the century. With bankruptcies looming even higher.
This economic policy is designed to cause the failure of small business and install a Japanese style failure the likes of which we will not be able to recover from.
We must cause the congress to abort such a fiasco as it will assure the doom of a free people.
What is needed now is fiscal restraint and lower taxes. The doom and gloom that is predicted by the government is false and a sham. We know how to get out of this mess and the elections that are coming will help pull us out.