The Economy Isn’t as Bad as We Think

At any given moment people are losing jobs, gaining jobs, losing money, making money. This never changes. So, of course you can make a case at almost any given time how badly the economy is doing. It always bad for someone at any given time. What irritates me is how easily we tend to oversstate how bad the economy is when a Republican is President no matter how much the economic numbers dispute this. Likewise, the media showed a strong sense of "restraint" when reporting on the economy during the end of Bill Clinton's last year. This in fact turned into a recession for a lot of reasons, but there is no disputing that President Bush's actions lead to a strong recovery. Now we have a year and a half after Democrats took control of Congress with no desire to make Bush's tax cuts permanent, the economy is once again on shakey ground. Not as bad as some people like to portray, but with a good possibility it will get worse due to Democratic inaction. I'm sorry, but economic stimulus checks sound good to the voters (yes, buy some more votes), but ultimately will fail. We would have been much better off making the Bush tax cuts permanent a year ago. But, of course that would have improved the economic outlook and made it even more obvious that Democrats have no clue on how to stimulate an economy. People can figure this out for themselves, but many will not.

Jeff Ihde of WI 9:12PM June 22, 2008