Monday, February 9, 2009

The Porkulus is coming.

So here's ten questions about it

1. You assert that without your economic stimulus plan unemployment will reach double digits. If your stimulus plan passes, as expected, what do you project the unemployment rate to be in one year? Two years? Three years?

2. How many jobs will the bill create in its first year? In what sectors of the economy will the job growth occur?

3. What will the deficit be in 2009? 2010? 2011?

....

9. What’s the percentage probability that the stimulus plan will work? If you can’t give an estimate, why should we give you one trillion dollars?

10. What’s your Plan B if the economic stimulus doesn’t work? What's your exit strategy if the plan actually does harm?

And two non-stimulus bonus questions:

The tax problems of Geithner, Daschle, Killefer, and Solis are different in kind and degree. Please describe your standards for permitting some tax scofflaws to remain in your administration but not others.
You 're about to ramp up military operations in Afghanistan but Russia has pressured Kyrgyzstan to forbid the U.S. from using the Manas air base crucial to supplying our forces in Afghanistan. What have you done about that?


More questions could be. "Do you foresee the need for another such bill next year? How does the urgency of this current bill mesh with TARP II?"

Don't expect the lapdog press to ask these basic questions.

And we see how Obama handles a challenge...

By getting out of the White House and back onto the campaign trail.

Seriously, he's in Elkhart Indiana campaigning.

In a way, Obama’s escaping rather than campaigning. The problem in this bill isn’t in Elkhart, and neither is the solution. Obama let his signature issue jump off the rails when he failed to control Nancy Pelosi and force her to get Republicans involved in writing the bill. That didn’t happen in Elkhart. He could solve that problem by summoning Pelosi and Harry Reid to the Oval Office and instructing them to go back to the drawing board, this time with Republican leadership, and get a bill that would gain massive support on both sides of the aisle.


Obama doesn't want to negotiate. Not with domestic rivals, oh no, that's saved for enemy countries.

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