Friday, December 05, 2008

Gov. Perry’s Neo-Hooverism

Gov. Rick Perry recently co-authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal with South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford arguing against federal bailout and stimulus efforts to revive the flagging economy.
This has been correctly identified by certain Blogger types
as a governing philosophy known as Neo-Hooverism, as in Herbert Hoover, whose failed economic policies led to the Great Depression and whose austere response to the crisis only made it worse.
I find it disturbing that Republicans like Perry and Sanford are suddenly so concerned about the prospect of deficit spending after saying nary a word about the $5 trillion in debt run up by the current Republican administration. They say:

Washington doesn't have money in hand for any of these proposals. Every penny would be borrowed.


And yet, Washington didn’t have money in hand for the War in Iraq either and that didn’t seem to bother them any. Why is it OK to spend hundreds of billions to fix up Iraq’s economy, but it’s not OK to invest a similar amount on our own economy?
Cutting back on government spending right now would be a disaster on top of a disaster. Private industry just dumped 534,000 jobs and is leaving it up to the federal government to pick up the slack in the form of unemployment benefits, welfare and medicare. Without all this federal spending, people would be out on the streets, going hungry, losing homes, causing civil unrest and turmoil. This do nothing approach that Perry and Sanford are advocating is such a horribly bad idea that even the Bush administration, the worst presidential administration in the history of our nation, rejected it outright.

Does Perry really believe what he is saying? Or is he appealing to the baser instincts of the electorate in preparation for a big fight next year with Kay Bailey Hutchison, who he has already slammed as “Kay Bailout Hutchison”.

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