How Democrats missed their chance when FDR did not (opinion).

[austrianecon]

Some here love to say Government isn't spending enough in 2016.. but the real question is why in 2009 and 2010 didn't Democrats spend and spend correctly to fix the issues in the US? Democrats could have been forward thinking as FDR in some projects that was done under his Presidency... such as Hoover Dam, Griffith Observatory, Tennessee Valley Authority, or Blue Ridge Parkway. Yet Democrats of 2009 and 2010 (including Obama) did nothing but crap..

Discuss...

 

[Crovax]

Some here love to say Government isn't spending enough in 2016.. but the real question is why in 2009 and 2010 didn't Democrats spend and spend correctly to fix the issues in the US? Democrats could have been forward thinking as FDR in some projects that was done under his Presidency... such as Hoover Dam, Griffith Observatory, Tennessee Valley Authority, or Blue Ridge Parkway. Yet Democrats of 2009 and 2010 (including Obama) did nothing but crap..

Discuss...

Because the only thing Obama has ever cared about is his legacy which is why he spent all of his political capital on the vastly unpopular Obamacare and cost himself the next 6 years of congress.

 

[pdog]

Some here love to say Government isn't spending enough in 2016.. but the real question is why in 2009 and 2010 didn't Democrats spend and spend correctly to fix the issues in the US? Democrats could have been forward thinking as FDR in some projects that was done under his Presidency... such as Hoover Dam, Griffith Observatory, Tennessee Valley Authority, or Blue Ridge Parkway. Yet Democrats of 2009 and 2010 (including Obama) did nothing but crap..

Discuss...

You hardly seem interested in an honest answer with "nothing but crap" but I'll get it a shot anyway. In general Democrats are only slightly more logical in economic terms and I think that's half by accident, half from ideology. Democrats do a better job of recognizing the plight of the unsuccessful comes mostly from a long chain of fewer opportunities - bad parents, bad schools, etc. I think they are slightly better at recognizing the aggregates - that infrastructure spending helps the business by getting it's workers to work in the most efficient way possible and that isn't just a benefit of the worker. Those are really really the only reasons I think they are SEEM more likely to spend more money - although even that is ironic considering that spending flows tend to be slightly higher under republican controlled years.

Do I think democrats made a mistake in going after the ACA instead of more spending, sure. But the democrats were almost as afraid as the republicans of "debt" after the financial crisis once we started making a demon out of the bailouts and deficit spending in general and that is abundantly clear in the montage that kicks of the Kelton video (starting at about 4:20):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d57M6ATPZIE

Further, I'm not sure credit should necessary go to FDR. It was Mariner Eccles that really identified that spending and not constriction was needed.

Frankly, I don't agree that is the "real" question - understanding stupidity of politicians for chasing the stupidity of the electorate instead of educating it is pretty easy to understand. I think the real question is how do con-tarians doubt the ideals of Keynes, Eccles, or FDR, or even MMT when that "forward thinking" time is right there for everybody to see. Even those that look as WWII as the true recovery time have to acknowledge that putting more people to work thru government spending is what pulled us out of the depression, not the war itself.

And why are we talking about 2010? Here we have Clinton pledging more infrastructure spending. Are you happy now? Donald Trump is wants to double her number? Now are you happy?

 

[Gimmesometruth]

Some here love to say Government isn't spending enough in 2016.. but the real question is why in 2009 and 2010 didn't Democrats spend and spend correctly to fix the issues in the US? Democrats could have been forward thinking as FDR in some projects that was done under his Presidency... such as Hoover Dam, Griffith Observatory, Tennessee Valley Authority, or Blue Ridge Parkway. Yet Democrats of 2009 and 2010 (including Obama) did nothing but crap..

Discuss...

Seems to me....you would rather nothing be done:

This makes no sense.. 3 facts.

Obama's stimulus was passed and spent in a Democratic House and Senate.
Obama stimulus ended 2 years ago.
We are 8 months into austerity and the sky isn't falling.

Funny that now you ask "why didn't they do more then?"

 

[MrPeanut]

Most modern democratic politicians aren't FDR democrats. They tend to be more conservative, with the exception of social policies, and would rather meet in the middle on most issues. It really started with Reagan democrats and was solidified with the Clinton presidency.

 

[mmi]

why in 2009 and 2010 didn't Democrats spend and spend correctly to fix the issues in the US?

Political acumen and partisan opposition. An effort to do more would have presented a serious risk of becoming isolated as "big spenders." Look at the hysteria generated by the ARRA, which contained only enough spending to keep state and local gubmints from slashing services beyond tolerable limits and get a few steps down the road on rebuilding our infrastructure.

The response to the 2008 collapse and the GOP SSE Great Recession was in many ways inadequate. I'd look to those who created the problem and fought desperately to block an effective remedy as being the ones responsible for the whole god damn mess.

Because the only thing Obama has ever cared about is his legacy

Completely unsupported RW BS.

>>he spent all of his political capital on the vastly unpopular Obamacare

He also got the ARRA, which helped avoid a worldwide depression. And the claim that the ACA is "vastly unpopular" is a disgusting lie.



>>cost himself the next 6 years of congress.

The lying, RW hate media did a very good job of convincing millions of ignorant whites, many of whom feel threatened and abused by their loss of racial preeminence in our society, that the uppity, commie, Kenyan, Muslim, homo, America-hating witch doctor was bent on the destruction of our American heritage. The GOP leadership saw this as a means to have its way in Congress so long as it allowed the fifty or so teabugger assholes in its caucus to have a stranglehold on the gubmint.

We have, as a nation, suffered the consequences of those developments, including the rise of the Golden Slut. But you can't escape justice for long, and the Republican party is now facing a potential disaster at the polls in Nov. Sort of like Ali-Foreman, and you know how that ended.

democrats made a mistake in going after the ACA instead of more spending

I strongly disagree. The cost and suffering involved in tens of millions of Americans living without health insurance was intolerable. That problem has now been reduced dramatically. Affordable health insurance is generally available to all Americans, and the Negro will go down in history as its champion, a distinction that will … provide a proud LEGACY.

>>Clinton pledging more infrastructure spending.

Yes. You likely can't get everything done at once when faced with strong opposition.

GMT: part of yer reply is to a different thread.

 

[Gimmesometruth]

GMT: part of yer reply is to a different thread.

I know, I'm pointing out the inconsistency in the OP's overall feelings towards stimulus, a few years ago it was "we have austerity, the sky has not fallen".....but now it is..."Why didn't the Dems do more then?".

He never wanted more then, so it seems incredible to flip the script now....that is......unless he is looking for a scapegoat for the lack of economic take-off....but then again, he of all people, our former derivatives salesman, should have known what a credit market collapse would mean as far as a recovery. I bet I could go back and find examples where people were arguing that more should have been done....and find him poo-pooing the idea. But then again, that is essentially what he did in the quote I dug up from 3 years ago.

 

[mmi]

I'm pointing out the inconsistency in the OP's overall feelings towards stimulus

OK.

>>the quote I dug up from 3 years ago.

Good work, detective. Carry on. ☺

 

[Gimmesometruth]

but the real question is why in 2009 and 2010 didn't Democrats

Because..in part..there was not strong leadership out of the WH. Christine Romer wanted a bigger stimulus package:


What happened? When Romer showed Summers her $1.7-to-$1.8 trillion figure late the week before the memo was due, he dismissed it as impractical. So Romer spent the next day or two coming up with a reasonable compromise: $1.2 trillion. In a revised document that she sent Summers over the weekend, she included the $1.2 trillion figure, along with two more limited options: about $600 billion and about $850 billion.

At first, Summers gave her every indication that all three figures would appear in the memo he was sending the president-elect. But with less than twenty-four hours before the memo needed to be in Obama’s hands, Summers informed her that he was inclined to strike the $1.2 trillion figure. Though Summers, like Romer, believed more stimulus was almost unambiguously better, he also felt that a $1.2 trillion proposal, to say nothing of $1.8 trillion, would be dead on arrival in Congress. Moreover, since Obama’s political operatives were convinced that any stimulus approaching a trillion dollars was hopeless, Summers worried that urging more than this amount would stamp him and Romer as oblivious in their eyes. “$1.2 trillion is nonplanetary,” he told Romer, invoking a Summers-ism for “ludicrous.” “People will think we don’t get it.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/100961/memo-larry-summers-obama

 

[mmi]

there was not strong leadership out of the WH.

"Not strong" or simply "realistic"? Governing can be tricky, you'll agree. How hard did we push early on to go after the Nazis and the Confederates?

 

[iguanaman]

Some here love to say Government isn't spending enough in 2016.. but the real question is why in 2009 and 2010 didn't Democrats spend and spend correctly to fix the issues in the US? Democrats could have been forward thinking as FDR in some projects that was done under his Presidency... such as Hoover Dam, Griffith Observatory, Tennessee Valley Authority, or Blue Ridge Parkway. Yet Democrats of 2009 and 2010 (including Obama) did nothing but crap..

Discuss...

There is nothing to discuss. Republicans filibustered everything that Obama or the Dems wanted. Their only aim was to make him a 1 term President...remember. The Dems only had a 60 vote majority for 72 days....and even that was not guaranteed because of the "blue dogs".

The claim that Obama ruled like a monarch over Congress for two years — endlessly intoned as a talking point by Republicans — is more than just a misremembering of recent history or excited overstatement. It’s a lie.

It’s meant to represent that Obama’s had his chance to try out his ideas, and to obscure and deny the relentless GOP obstructionism and Democratic factionalism he’s encountered since Day One.

They seem to figure if they repeat this often enough, you’ll believe it.

The Myth of the Filibuster-Proof Democratic Senate

 

[Gimmesometruth]

"Not strong" or simply "realistic"? Governing can be tricky, you'll agree. How hard did we push early on to go after the Nazis and the Confederates?

I think not strong is correct, from the standpoint that Summers and the Prez did not think Dems would support a larger level....and....that no one had any real idea how bad the collapse would be from the perspective of late 08/early 09.

I think this gets to the broader issue, I think it is now that we are seeing from the OP a large amount of Monday morning QB'ing, a flipping of the script.


As far as enemies go, it took, in the case of WWII, the Japanese to attack us in order to get cons on board, whereas just a few years previously the American Legion was enamored with Mussolini. I think Krugman was correct when he argued the WH should have claimed we were being attacked by aliens to motivate cons to get moving on a real recovery.

 

[pdog]

I strongly disagree. The cost and suffering involved in tens of millions of Americans living without health insurance was intolerable. That problem has now been reduced dramatically. Affordable health insurance is generally available to all Americans, and the Negro will go down in history as its champion, a distinction that will … provide a proud LEGACY.

>>Clinton pledging more infrastructure spending.

Yes. You likely can't get everything done at once when faced with strong opposition.

GMT: part of yer reply is to a different thread.

I'm not saying I disagree with universal health care - I in fact agree with it wholeheartedly even if we have to take the indirect route together and support the ACA even in its imperfect form. The part I disagree with is democrats avoiding doubling down on the government intervention at the ECONOMIC level. The key event in that period was the economy and going after healthcare at that time not only felt like a side bar but it created this "expense" problem (even if most of that fear mongering didn't come to fruition). They could have put people to work with good jobs (including health care) and made the association to the economy a little more salient. That would have hammered home this debt fear was nonsense but they were just as dumb about it. Democrats then made it worse in 2010 and 2014 when they backed away from Obama mostly because of the ACA when they should have again doubled down on the improving economy. They didn't and instead delivered a half-ass wishy washy message and got their ass handed to them because of it. Fast forward to today when the economy has improved, and deficit isn't even part of the candidates rhetoric and you've got a much better time to talk about equality - including healthcare.

 

[Gimmesometruth]

 

[Vern]

Some here love to say Government isn't spending enough in 2016.. but the real question is why in 2009 and 2010 didn't Democrats spend and spend correctly to fix the issues in the US? Democrats could have been forward thinking as FDR in some projects that was done under his Presidency... such as Hoover Dam, Griffith Observatory, Tennessee Valley Authority, or Blue Ridge Parkway. Yet Democrats of 2009 and 2010 (including Obama) did nothing but crap..

Discuss...

as Gimmesometruth shows the OP is not really here to have an honest and intelligent discussion but I'll explain it anyway. the stimulus started mid 2009 and basically ran to early 2011. Clearly the Great Bush Recession was worse than predicted and the stimulus should have been bigger but they didn't know that when they passed it. They simply had to let it run its course and see if something more was needed. And when the stimulus ran out in 2011 something more was needed (remember, the Great Bush Recession was the worst recession since the depression). So President Obama proposed his jobs bill. It was a stimulus bill which emphasized lowering unemployment via tax cuts to businesses, things republicans had previously supported. But it was too late because the obstructionist republicans were in charge and did whatever they could to undermine the recovery. Such as blocking President Obama's jobs bill, shutting down the govt, threatening to default on the debt, threatening to let the Bush tax cuts expire for everybody and refusing to compromise reducing the deficit.

so while President Obama saved us from the Great Bush Depression, he couldn't save us from the un-American and unfit to govern republicans. And their ignorant base cheered them on.

 

[mmi]

the un-American and unfit to govern republicans.

Very brief, off-topic comment from the so-called Hyphen King:

"unfit to govern Republicans" is fine English … except ya need hyphens for that string — "unfit-to-govern Republicans."

 

[chuckiechan]

Some here love to say Government isn't spending enough in 2016.. but the real question is why in 2009 and 2010 didn't Democrats spend and spend correctly to fix the issues in the US? Democrats could have been forward thinking as FDR in some projects that was done under his Presidency... such as Hoover Dam, Griffith Observatory, Tennessee Valley Authority, or Blue Ridge Parkway. Yet Democrats of 2009 and 2010 (including Obama) did nothing but crap..

Discuss...

Obama had a choice: concentrate on social change or fix the economy, he chose social change.

 

[Greenbeard]

Democrats could have been forward thinking as FDR in some projects that was done under his Presidency... such as Hoover Dam, Griffith Observatory, Tennessee Valley Authority, or Blue Ridge Parkway.

Yeah, why didn't they do anything important in '09-'10?

Obama began with a stimulus larger than the entire New Deal in real dollars. Widely ridiculed as Porkulus at the time, it is now widely credited by economists with helping to end the Great Recession with short-term economic adrenaline: record aid to the vulnerable that directly boosted 13 million Americans out of poverty; record aid to states that averted 300,000 teacher layoffs; hard-hat projects that upgraded 42,000 miles of road, 2,700 bridges and 6,000 miles of rail; and roughly $300 billion worth of tax cuts for businesses and families.

But with little fanfare, the stimulus also poured cash into Obama’s long-term agenda for reshaping the country. It transformed the U.S. clean-energy sector, blasting an astonishing $90 billion into renewables and other long-neglected green priorities, while birthing a new research agency called ARPA-E. The only investment that got much press was a failed $535 million loan to a solar manufacturer called Solyndra, but that same loan program financed nine of the world’s largest solar farms, among other projects; the overall portfolio is thriving. The green stimulus helped quadruple U.S. wind power, put the first 400,000 electric vehicles on American roads and began a low-carbon transition that helped the United States lead the push for a bold global climate deal in Paris.

[The student loan overhaul] yanked the program away from Sallie Mae and other private lenders that had raked in enormous fees without taking much risk. The bill then diverted the budget savings into a $36 billion expansion of Pell Grants for low-income undergraduates, plus an unheralded but extraordinary student-debt relief effort that is now quietly transferring the burden of college loans from struggling borrowers to taxpayers. It all added up to a revolution in how America finances higher education, completely overshadowed by the health care hoopla and drama.

Meanwhile, the Race to the Top competition had an even faster impact on education, inspiring almost every state to embrace at least some of Obama’s preferred K-12 reforms—removing caps on charter schools, expanding testing, adopting tougher standards like the Common Core—just to improve their chances for a grant.

In the same vein, a $25 billion incentive program in the stimulus for health information technology has helped drag a pen-and-paper medical system into the digital age, with adoption soaring from about 10 percent of hospitals and 20 percent of doctors in 2008 to about 80 percent of hospitals and 80 percent of doctors today. E-prescriptions are ubiquitous, and digitization is already reducing fatal errors and unnecessary tests caused by sloppy handwriting and inaccessible files. . . “Come on, in five years, we changed an approach that had been dominant in medicine for 4,000 years,” Mostashari says.

...Obama went on to push comprehensive Wall Street reforms through Congress, while helping to craft aggressive new international financial rules known as Basel III. . . And Obama’s new consumer bureau may be the most influential new regulatory agency since the EPA, already collecting more than $10 billion in fines from financial players that used to enjoy relative impunity.

Obamacare has unleashed America’s biggest expansion of health care access since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. It has already extended medical coverage to some 18 million uninsured Americans. It also closed loopholes that insurers used to deny coverage to insured Americans when they got sick. And it eliminated co-payments for quit-smoking programs, birth control pills, certain cancer screenings and other preventive care.

Some of the see-what-sticks cost experiments also seem to be improving care. One recent report found that infections and other “hospital-acquired conditions” have declined 17 percent since 2010, when Obamacare created financial incentives for hospitals to avoid them. That reduction saved an estimated 87,000 lives and $20 billion. . .

Under Obamacare, about one-fifth of Medicare patients have already shifted into alternatives to fee-for-service, and the goal is to get half the system paying for value rather than volume by 2018. Maryland’s hospitals are now paid through “global budgets” that include outpatient care, so they no longer have incentives to admit patients just to keep their beds full. . .There are signs that Obama’s convoluted jumble of changes may be starting to rationalize an irrational system.

 

[mmi]

Obama had a choice: concentrate on social change or fix the economy, he chose social change.

Lives are more important than money. And you can get money back, but not yer life or the life of a loved one.

 

[chuckiechan]

His social change was anti-police and pro illegal alien, among other things.

 

[mmi]

His social change was anti-police and pro illegal alien, among other things.

Completely unsupported RW BS rhetoric.

 

[austrianecon]

You hardly seem interested in an honest answer with "nothing but crap" but I'll get it a shot anyway. In general Democrats are only slightly more logical in economic terms and I think that's half by accident, half from ideology. Democrats do a better job of recognizing the plight of the unsuccessful comes mostly from a long chain of fewer opportunities - bad parents, bad schools, etc. I think they are slightly better at recognizing the aggregates - that infrastructure spending helps the business by getting it's workers to work in the most efficient way possible and that isn't just a benefit of the worker. Those are really really the only reasons I think they are SEEM more likely to spend more money - although even that is ironic considering that spending flows tend to be slightly higher under republican controlled years.

Do I think democrats made a mistake in going after the ACA instead of more spending, sure. But the democrats were almost as afraid as the republicans of "debt" after the financial crisis once we started making a demon out of the bailouts and deficit spending in general and that is abundantly clear in the montage that kicks of the Kelton video (starting at about 4:20):

In an honest answer? I am asking, you a democrat, why you think Obama's stimulus was good when it actually provided this nation with nothing of substance? Such as those things I listed, that FDR's New Deal program did. Obama and Democrats had a massive chance to do New Deal 2.0 or 3.0 if count FDR's New Deal in two parts. Democrats could have fixed bridges, highways, Schools (especially inner city schools), internet speeds and made Amtrak's NE line 100% high speed.

Yet they pissed money away. There was no concise plan on how to spend stimulus. It was a few dollars here and a few dollars there. Who gives DOD $4.4b to modernize Defense Department facilities? It's that's part of the DoD budget already? Isn't that why we spend $600 plus billion on DoD per year?

Also don't care what Stephanie Kelton thinks. MMT is failed Chartalism.

Further, I'm not sure credit should necessary go to FDR. It was Mariner Eccles that really identified that spending and not constriction was needed.

Frankly, I don't agree that is the "real" question - understanding stupidity of politicians for chasing the stupidity of the electorate instead of educating it is pretty easy to understand. I think the real question is how do con-tarians doubt the ideals of Keynes, Eccles, or FDR, or even MMT when that "forward thinking" time is right there for everybody to see. Even those that look as WWII as the true recovery time have to acknowledge that putting more people to work thru government spending is what pulled us out of the depression, not the war itself.

And why are we talking about 2010? Here we have Clinton pledging more infrastructure spending. Are you happy now? Donald Trump is wants to double her number? Now are you happy?

Democrats weren't chasing electorate in 2009. Democrats were given a free pass in 2009, especially in the first 100 days, to do what they needed to do. They could have spend $1t on stimulus and still been reelected in 2010. They screwed the pooch on ACA and that's a different issue. You can easily doubt Eccles because FDR didn't just waste money as Eccles wanted. You can doubt MMT because it's Neo-Chartalism and not "forward thinking" rather it's 'accounting identities' and they are just saying the same stuff as Keynes and other said almost a century ago. They actually believe one can't save without Government deficits which is ludicrous. Anybody can sink MMT in this manner.. Saving is the excess of production over consumption.

Government couldn't have put anybody to work if it wasn't WWII. It's cause of WWII people were drafted or joined. Most of those drafted actually had jobs already. What it really did was take the men out of the workforce and put women into the workforce DOUBLING household income during a period in which price controls and consumption limits were put in place.. which lead to a SAVINGS Glut which lead to War Bond drives that "paid" for the War.

Why are we talking about 2009? Because the reality is.. wasting resources (capital and debt) in the past does not justify future spending. Both parties subscribe to Keynesian theory but both parties have ALWAYS screwed the pooch. So what difference does it make if they promise it today, they promised it in 2001 and 2009 and I still haven't found anything that shows useful spending took place in a major stimulus bill.

 

[austrianecon]

Seems to me....you would rather nothing be done:



Funny that now you ask "why didn't they do more then?"

And I am posing the question to you.. my views are quiet clear.. but you never go down to the economic section in which I have no problem with stimulus that actually produces something.. hence the FDR reference. I hate wasteful spending and Obama stimulus was full of wasteful spending.

 

[austrianecon]

Political acumen and partisan opposition. An effort to do more would have presented a serious risk of becoming isolated as "big spenders." Look at the hysteria generated by the ARRA, which contained only enough spending to keep state and local gubmints from slashing services beyond tolerable limits and get a few steps down the road on rebuilding our infrastructure.

The response to the 2008 collapse and the GOP SSE Great Recession was in many ways inadequate. I'd look to those who created the problem and fought desperately to block an effective remedy as being the ones responsible for the whole god damn mess.

And this argument would fly if Democrats didn't control Congress in 2009 and 2010.

 

[austrianecon]

I know, I'm pointing out the inconsistency in the OP's overall feelings towards stimulus, a few years ago it was "we have austerity, the sky has not fallen".....but now it is..."Why didn't the Dems do more then?".

He never wanted more then, so it seems incredible to flip the script now....that is......unless he is looking for a scapegoat for the lack of economic take-off....but then again, he of all people, our former derivatives salesman, should have known what a credit market collapse would mean as far as a recovery. I bet I could go back and find examples where people were arguing that more should have been done....and find him poo-pooing the idea. But then again, that is essentially what he did in the quote I dug up from 3 years ago.

There is absolutely ZERO inconsistency. Again, my opinion matters naught here. I am asking why should ANYBODY trust Democrats and as byproduct Republicans who want to do stimulus when **** all has been accomplished. You seem to think I am changing my opinion on stimulus. I've stated since day one Obama stimulus wouldn't do dick for the US economy. Ask Kush, ask Imapeg, and ask JP.. those who actually spend time in the Economics forum, I've always said only way stimulus works is if it actually produces something of value. Obama stimulus actually produced nothing of value. It didn't increase US broadband capabilities to compete against the rest of the world. It didn't reduce transit times for rails which is the backbone of our economy. It didn't even improve schools (fix up or build).