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WASHINGTON, D.C.: President-elect Barack Obama’s
plan to haul the US economy out of recession entails a hefty
expansion of the US federal government—a prospect that has
conservative critics aghast.
The centerpiece of the plan is
Obama’s pledge to create or preserve three million jobs—of which
he said “more than 80 percent” would be in the private sector.
That means up to 20 percent of
the jobs would be in government, or 600,000, a sizeable addition to
the roughly 2.5 million people now on the federal payroll.
Reared on President Ronald
Reagan’s article of faith that “big government” is the
problem, not the solution, conservative pundits accuse Obama of
belatedly showing his true “liberal” colors.
“FDR had his Hundred Days;
Obama was going to have his Day,” National Review editor Rich
Lowry wrote, comparing President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal
to the incoming administration’s “madcap” dash for a stimulus
package.
Rush Limbaugh, the dean of
right-wing talk radio, said the only way Obama and “liberal
Democrats” could meet their target was to restore the draft and
conscript unsuspecting small-town Americans into the military.
The irony is that Republicans
under President George W. Bush oversaw an explosion in federal
spending after the deficit-slashing policies of Democrat Bill
Clinton, who declared the era of big government to be over.
Obama is wooing apostles of small
government by promising that 40 percent of his stimulus package,
which will be worth at least $775 billion, will be devoted to tax
cuts.
Future burden
House of Representatives minority
leader John Boehner welcomed the tax proposals but said they did not
go far enough.
“I remain concerned about
wasteful spending that might be attached to the tax relief,” he
said Monday after talks with Obama on Capitol Hill.
“Simply put, we should not bury
future generations under mountains of debt and create 600,000 new
government jobs . . . in the name of ‘economic stimulus,’”
Boehner said.
Obama has not spelt out where
those new jobs are coming from. But he has a laundry list of plans
that echo FDR’s public works projects, which saw the government go
on a hiring spree to cut mass unemployment in the 1930s.
The president-elect wants his
stimulus spending to include highway and bridge repairs, renovations
to school classrooms, aid to cash-strapped states and the expansion
of broadband Internet to rural America.
The broadband plan harkens to
Roosevelt’s public works, which brought reliable electricity and
water supplies to rural residents, overseen by thousands more
government workers on boards and planning commissions.
Unemployed Americans
US jobless rates today are
nowhere near as bad as in the Great Depression. But they are bad
enough, with the economy shedding a stunning 533,000 jobs in
November alone to send the unemployment rate to a 15-year high of
6.7 percent.
Obama said the December jobs
report would deliver more dismal news when it comes out on Friday,
and stressed there was not a moment to lose.
“When the American people spoke
last November, they were demanding change, change in policies that
helped deliver the worst economic crisis that we’ve seen since the
Great Depression,” he said Tuesday after meeting his economic
team, insisting the stimulus money would not be wasted.
Deeper debate
Senate Republican leader Mitch
McConnell, however, wants deeper deliberation by lawmakers and the
public.
“We shouldn’t be rushed into
voting for a bill that by any estimate will be bigger than all 50
state budgets combined, especially when many of the jobs it promises
won’t even materialize for another year,” he said.
“Before we agree to it, the
American people need to see the details. They need to be able to see
for themselves whether this is money well spent.”
‘Governator’ appeal
Meanwhile, California Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday (Wednesday in Manila) urged Obama
to put forward a federal economic stimulus proposal to cope with the
worsening economic recession.
Schwarzenegger told Obama in a
letter that there was urgent need for “a broad national economic
recovery package to generate jobs and get our economy moving forward
again,” the governor’s office said in a statement.
“A substantial federal stimulus
program is needed to ease the impacts of the current economic
downturn,” the statement quoted Schwarzenegger as telling Obama.
“My administration is committed to working with you to develop
strategies to revitalize our economy, put the nation on a path to
energy security and help our citizens during this difficult time.”
--AFP With Xinhua
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