Change You Can Believe In?

To the Editor:

In the letter published 2/13/09, “Let’s Have Some Hope For A Change,” Richard English reverts to Bush bashing, flawed economic theory and several outright falsehoods to assert “we could use some hope emanating from the President for a change,” whatever that means. “Curiously,” in the spirit of change and bipartisanship, President Obama outsourced the writing of the most expensive bill ever to members of the ultra left-wing faction of his party. Moreover, he and Democratic leaders broke their promise to make the final bill available for public review prior to voting, ultimately rushing through a massive 1,071 page, $787 billion bill in the dark of night, cloaked in secrecy, which no one, including the President, has had time to read. Doesn’t legislation of this size and scope deserve an honest, thoughtful public debate? The truth is, public opinion of this bill was tanking because it contains very little “economic stimulus,” and deserved to be rejected by conservative Republicans. It’s a Trojan horse of liberal social engineering and spending initiatives that will permanently grow the size of government while bankrupting our future.

Mr English’s claim that the cause of this crisis is Bush’s “failed economic policies” ignores or distorts reality. Bush inherited a recession of his own following the tech bubble implosion, which was exacerbated by 9/11. A combination of tax cuts and monetary easing led to a surge in growth and record tax revenue — growth averaged over three percent, while the jobless rate declined to 4.4 percent from 6.3 percent, and the budget deficit declined to 1.1 percent from 3.9 percent of GDP. In contrast, overspending, failed housing policy, consumer overleverage, lax regulatory oversight, exotic mortgages, incompetent financial guarantors, complicit rating agencies, aggressive mortgage underwriting, an overly accommodative Fed, and Congressional and Wall Street ineptitude, among other things, contributed to the seriousness of this crisis.

Failed economic policy did not lead us into this mess, but it will certainly lead us deeper into it. What President Obama espouses is a return to an economic theory known as Keynesian economics. This failed theory argues that the way to stimulate the economy is to increase government spending and deficits. The problem is that government has to get the money from the private sector — by raising taxes and/or issuing debt — both of which lead to an offset in economic activity. This policy was tried in the 1930s by FDR, and failed. Tried again by Japan in the 1990s, and failed. By comparison, Reagan’s 1980s tax cuts and emphasis on limited government, fiscal discipline and free markets unleashed the greatest 25-year period of wealth creation in our history.

Enacting this bill under the guise of stimulus is to suspend belief to believe that we can spend our way back to prosperity under proven failed liberal economic policies that only serve to grow government and reward liberal interest groups and failed European-style socialist ideology, while amassing the largest federal debt in our history. Is this the kind of hope and change voters were expecting?

Joseph Eppers

31 Russett Road, Sandy Hook                                February 16, 2009