A year ago, President Bush and Congress passed a “stimulus bill” for $146 billion to jumpstart the economy. It failed. Last summer, a housing bill was passed to save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It cost $300 billion and it also failed. In the autumn, with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the failure of Fannie and Freddie, the government then passed a “bailout” for Wall Street to the tab of $700 billion. It was a failure. A few weeks ago, President Obama signed into law another pork-laden stimulus bill, the euphemistically entitled American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Democrats succeeded in portraying George Bush as a stereotypical conservative, given his penchant for good-ole’-boy southern social values and his proclivity for an assertive foreign policy posture. But economically, nothing could be further from the truth. George Bush was not a small-government conservative. He grew government, and the role of government, immeasurably. And Obama wants to add to that. Big time.
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