Morning Bell: How the Obama Tax Hikes Affect You

Conn Carroll / October 12, 2010

Yesterday, Time Magazine senior political analyst Mark Halperin wrote: “With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters.” As if to prove Halperin’s point, Vice President Joe Biden told a group of Democratic donors in Seattle Friday: “The Recovery Act didn’t do enough because we couldn’t spend enough.”

At least Biden’s statement shows that the White House is coming to grips with the fact that their $862 billion economic stimulus plan failed. Last Friday’s jobs report established that fact yet again, showing a net loss of 95,000 jobs in September, a half million jobs lost since the Obama recovery began, and an unemployment rate of 9.6%. In President Obama’s two years in office, federal spending is up more than 21% and the national debt has risen by $2.9 trillion. And Biden wants the American people to believe that this administration has not spent enough? Clueless indeed. Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow J.D. Foster explains why the Obama stimulus failed:

The theory underlying Obama’s stimulus was that the economy was weak because total demand was too low. The suggested solution is then to increase demand by increasing government spending, exploding the deficit in the process. (more…)