Home
In this issue
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Jan. 13, 2009 / 17 Teves 5769

Quit digging

By Mona Charen


Printer Friendly Version
Email this article

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | My city, Washington, D.C., is going bonkers for Obama. So is yours no doubt. Shopping for party favors, I came across — in addition to key chains and light-up necklaces — T-shirts and coffee mugs emblazoned with the Anointed One's photograph. Jan. 12's Washington Post carries a story about Obama attorney Greg Craig. He took the job imagining he'd be confronting knotty separation of powers issues. And he may. But for now, he's "charged with stopping the commercial exploitation of his client's image — the Obama can openers, Obama chocolate chip cookies, Obama chocolate bars and the like now on sale just about everywhere."


I've never witnessed enthusiasm like this for an incoming president. There's always a degree of giddiness on the part of those who supported the president-elect, whoever he is, but today's excitement borders on worship. It's an interesting contrast. Times are pretty tough. Our economy is struggling. Unemployment is exploding. Once iconic American manufacturers, to say nothing of banks, insurance companies, and securities firms, are lining up for federal handouts. The greatest terror-sponsoring nation on the face of the globe is about to acquire nuclear weapons. And yet people are thrilled with Obama and convinced that he can tackle these complex problems.


I hope he can. But honestly, the noises he is making so far and his proposal for a trillion dollars in new federal spending are scary. Admittedly and sadly, this isn't much of a departure from the Bush administration's death throes, when the president — terrified of being tagged forever with the Hoover label — reversed a lifetime of adherence to free market principles to bail out a conga line of supplicants. (The irony is rich because Hoover himself doubled federal spending during the Great Depression. He became a Hoover anyway.) For the record, it should be noted that this was President Bush's self-description ("I'm a free market guy"), not a dispassionate assessment of his administration's economic philosophy, which was hardly small government.


The Democrats are in the driver's seat now. And with the exception of a brief period in the 1990s after Ross Perot made everyone deficit conscious, Democrats are the party of government — that is, the party of domestic spending. Every indicator of economic decline seems to them a green light to do what they would have done anyway — party like it's 1933! It's not that they are buying votes. No, the times demand extreme measures.


But before the first mortgage defaulted, we were already on a fast train to fiscal insolvency. The problem of the aging baby boomers and the Social Security/Medicare obligations we've undertaken but cannot pay for has not gone away. It crouches just around the bend.


And if the Obama "stimulus" bill passes, our federal deficit will top $1.7 trillion next year! As Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute has observed, "If government spending provided such a wonderful boost to the economy, we would be in Nirvana already." Or, as a cartoonist rendered it, our economy is in a hole and the Obama solution is "shovel ready." The first rule of getting out of holes is to quit digging. So the spending, while cheering a variety of contractors, unions, "green" companies, mayors and governors in the blue regions of the country is very unlikely to affect the recession at all.


Meanwhile, that murderous debt just keeps piling up and piling up. How will we pay it back and maintain America's credit rating in the world? Raise taxes? In a recession? No school of economic thought favors that. Are we going the way of Argentina?


This is a country that has adamantly declined to face fiscal reality when it comes to entitlements. We want health care reform that expands coverage and reduces costs. We acquired mortgages on the hope that housing prices would rise forever.


It's no wonder that we want to spend/borrow our way out of a deep recession.


Obama will have a few weeks or months of maximum political influence. If ever there were a time to do the really hard things — reduce spending, increase the retirement age, introduce real competition to the health care system, cut corporate tax rates, balance our books — this is it. If Obama used his popularity to achieve those critical goals for our nation's future, he would deserve to be on all those T-shirts and coffee mugs. He might even be a candidate for Mount Rushmore. As it is, he and we are headed in the wrong direction.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


Comment on JWR contributor Mona Charen's column by clicking here.

Mona Charen Archives

© 2006, Creators Syndicate

Insight (Our Columnists)

 Arnold Ahlert
 Mitch Albom
 Michael Barone
  Dave Barry
 Tony Blankley
 Andy Borowitz
 David Broder
 Stratfor Briefing
 Mona Charen
 Linda Chavez
 Ann Coulter
 Greg Crosby
 Larry Elder
 Suzanne Fields
 John Fund
 Frank J. Gaffney
 Lloyd Garver
 Jonah Goldberg
 Julia Gorin
 Jonathan Gurwitz
 Paul Greenberg
 Lewis Grossberger
 Victor Davis Hanson
 Betsy Hart
 Nat Hentoff
 David Horowitz
 Laura Ingraham
 Cheri Jacobus
Jeff Jacoby
 Paul Johnson
 Jack Kelly
 Ed Koch
 Ch. Krauthammer
 Michael Ledeen
 John Leo
 David Limbaugh
 Kathryn Lopez
 Rich Lowry
 Michelle Malkin
 Jackie Mason
 Dick Morris
 Bill O'Reilly
 Jim Mullen
 Clarence Page
 Kathleen Parker
 Dennis Prager
 Wesley Pruden
 Tom Purcell
 Jonathan Rauch
 Celia Rivenbark
 Robert Robb
 Cokie & Steve Roberts
 Pat Sajak
 Debra J. Saunders
 Culture Shlock
 Roger Simon
 Michael Smerconish
 Thomas Sowell
 Mark Steyn
 John Stossel
 Cal Thomas
 Bob Tyrrell
 Diana West
 Dave Weinbaum
 George Will
 Walter Williams
 Byron York
 Mort Zuckerman

'Toons
 Robert Arial
 Chuck Asay
 Baloo
 Chip Bok
 Dry Bones
  Lisa Benson
 John Branch
 Gary Brookins
 John Cole
 J. D. Crowe
 John Deering
 Brian Duffy
 Everything's Relative
 Mallard Fillmore
 Jake Fuller
 Bob Gorrel
 Joe Heller
 David Hitch
 Jerry Holber
 Steve Kelley
 Jeff Koterba
 Dick Locher
 Chan Lowe
 Ranan R. Lurie
 Jimmy Margulies
 Rick McKee
 Michael Ramirez
 Kevin Siers
 Jeff Stahler
 Ed Stein
 Danna Summers
 John Trever
 Gary Varvel
 Kirk Walters

Lifestyles
 How 2
 Lori Borgman
 The Savvy Consumer
 Elder matters
 Fixit
 Dr. Peter Gott
 GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
 Richard Lederer
 Tech Maven
 Every Monday Matters
 Nutrition Myths
 Bookmark These
 Bruce Williams
 How Stuff Works