Dems Luck Running Out - Road to the Middle Class

HOW LUCKY are the Democrats? They came into power in 1933 after a Republican president had been screwing up the economy for 3.5 years. They came into power in 1961 after President Eisenhower had paid down the WWII debt, so they could open the spigots for a decade of fun and frolic.

They came into power in 1976 just after the end of a nasty recession. They came into power in 1993 just after a mild recession.

But this time the Dems are coming into power at the beginning of a nasty recession.

Maybe their luck is running out. Because today government leaders need to make some difficult decisions to revive the economy. It’s not First and Ten. It’s Third and Long.

The political parties are, realistically, one-trick ponies. The Republicans always want to cut spending and taxes, and are looking over their shoulder wondering how much in the way of spending cuts the American people will tolerate.

The Democrats always believe in more spending. Whether it’s 1933 or 1993, it’s time for a stimulus.

But maybe not now. You see, the governments in the US have been cranking up spending on “nice-to-have” pretty well uninterrupted since the Reagan Cuts of 1981. There really isn’t anyone around that was there when cutting was the order of the day. And Democrats have never had to do the serious work of political triage: which lovely spending programs do I cut and which do I save?

It seems to me that the markets are telling us that the Spend Yesterday, Spend Now, Spend Tomorrow philosophy of the Democrats as manifested in the bloated budget of President Obama is wrong. The time has come for retrenchment, and the sooner the better.

Democrats don’t want to hear that. The present Obama generation has never had to hear it. For Democrats, the answer to every problem is to increase spending.

I suspect that things are going to have to get a lot worse before our Democratic friends will realize that they must change course and abandon their present policy of increased spending and bailouts.

Because sooner or later, we are going to have to get the business owners of America more money so they can earn enough profit to expand their businesses and start hiring.

Sooner or later, our Democratic friends are going to have to learn that tossing money away on political pet projects from new government buildings to more health care to more education to alternative-energy subsidies just doesn’t cut it.

The fact is that government is a cost. RIght now, the government is an enormous cost. The time has come to reduce that enormous burden on the backs of the American people. Then the economy can catch its breath and get moving again.

I just hope that the American people don’t have to suffer too much while our Democratic friends learn this vital lesson.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.