This is a posting about the idiocy we’ve elected to represent us in Washington. They don’t represent all of us – only small portions. If we could only rid ourselves of them.

  

Our last hope was Congress. How stupid was I to think that?

 

Watch Meet the Press and you will understand. Four elected officials talked incessantly and said, for the most part, nothing. One of those elected officials is my Senator, John Ensign, a good guy and someone who kindly endorsed my book. Even he disappointed me.

 

Again, I think Republicans are living in 1980. They fail to see that this is the economic equivalent to September 10, 2001.

 

The best example is Indiana Congressman Mike Pence, one of the most intransigent House members. He, along with the rest of the GOP, wants to tax-cut our way to a deeper recession.

 

There is a time-honored way to stimulate the economy.  John F.  Kennedy knew it, Ronald Reagan knew it.  When the towers fell in 2001, President George W. Bush knew it.  And that is you give the American people more of their hard-earned tax dollars, work–tax relief for working families and small businesses…

 

He’s wrong and a horrible observer of history and economics. JFK and Ronnie Reagan cut taxes and revived the economy. But they didn’t face what we’re facing today.

 

Here’s what I’m hearing from folks today that I’m talking to.

 

People with some means to survive this economic crisis have stopped spending money and are taking all available cash from savings and insurance policies and stuffing it into the 2009 equivalent of a mattress – a home safe or safe deposit box.

 

Those employers and managers who have laid people off tell me that the layoffs are not as drastically needed and, in many cases, an excuse to cut costs.

 

The cause of layoffs and lack of economic activity is the lack of credit available. People can’t use credit cards or home equity. And businesses are denied up-front capital to expand or hire.

 

To think that we’re going to spend ourselves back to prosperity is ridiculous. There is nothing to spend. The consumer is tapped out.

 

In other words, there is only one entity that spend us back into some prosperity and that’s the federal government.

 

Sure, it’s going to raise the deficit. That’s what you do in a recession. Now the GOP wants fiscal restraint?

 

Furthermore, Congressman Pence tries to conjure up the arguments of conservative economist Martin Feldstein – which he gets wrong. Here’s the transcript.

 

DAVID GREGORY: Conservative economic professor, economist from Harvard Martin Feldstein, who supported the stimulus originally, this is what he said back in October: “The only way to prevent a deepening recession will be a temporary program of increase government spending.” So what’s wrong with this approach?

 

REP. MIKE PENCE (R-IN): Well, Martin Feldstein now says it’s an $800 billion mistake.

 

Not exactly for that reason, though. Here’s what Feldstein wrote on January 29, 2009 in the Arizona Republic.

 

The plan is to give a tax cut of $500 a year for two years to each employed person. That’s not a good way to increase consumer spending. Experience shows that the money from such temporary, lump-sum tax cuts is largely saved or used to pay down debt. Only about 15 percent of last year’s tax rebates led to additional spending.

 

He says tax-cuts, especially the ones in the stimulus package, make no sense.

 

Again, I’m no liberal. The idiocy from the extreme left has been revealed as well when the “Buy American” provision was discovered and eventually removed. Talk about an invitation to a worldwide Depression.

 

And even though I consider myself a moderate, I fear the one thing we moderates become — wishy-washy. President Obama has, unfortunately, done that.

 

I’m hoping tomorrow in his national nightly news conference he wakes up and wakes us up with some common sense that ignores the extremist wings of both parties.

 

Aside from that I will call for a National Recall of everyone in Congress. Please join me.

 

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