LETTER: Obama And The Bailout

To the Editor:
With respect to the nation's economic crisis, we have passed through the “identify the guilty” stage and have moved on to “punish the innocent.” The innocent in this case are President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress.
How easily we forget that the huge government deficit and financial crisis that we now face were created by George W. Bush. Bush inherited a booming economy and a budget surplus from Bill Clinton and managed to turn this into a massive deficit during an eight year drunken orgy of unrestrained spending and irresponsible tax cuts.
It is George Bush and his Republican Congress who pushed through the biggest expansion of Medicare benefits in decades in a manner that lined the pockets of pharmaceutical companies.
Bush poured a trillion dollars into the Iraq war without arranging to pay for it. His failure to regulate the financial sector allowed Wall Street speculation to spin wildly out of control, wrecking our banking system.The country has a huge hangover from this eight-year-long party and Barack Obama has to deal with it. Now that Bush has left office, the Republicans have suddenly rediscovered fiscal rectitude. Witness the “tea party” activists who want to slash government, at least when it doesn't affect them. Where were they during the Bush years?
Ironically, with the anemic economy, now is the time to step on the economic gas pedal; if Obama had cut budgets to avoid deficit spending as did Herbert Hoover at the beginning of the Great Depression, the results would have been the same: 20% unemployment instead of 10% and a complete collapse of the economy. Instead, Obama had the courage to push through a controversial bank bailout and a huge stimulus package which invests in infrastructure and education as well as creating jobs. Though we are justified in our anger at the arrogance of Wall Street, the fact of the matter is that the bank bailout kept our economy from freezing completely.
In doing all of this, Obama has had to endure a constant barrage of criticism from a Republican Party whose stated goal is to bring down Obama, irrespective of the effects on the nation. However, this is nothing new; Franklin Roosevelt was subject to the same treatment as he struggled to bring America through the Great Depression. History vindicated Roosevelt, as the deficits incurred during his period in office were largely wiped out by the post World War II expansion. It will vindicate Obama as long as he sticks to his guns. Meanwhile, Howard Dean's statement that “you can't trust Republicans with your money” is as true now as it was then.

David J. Raymond
Socorro

LETTER: Obama And The Bailout