Playing the catastrophe card

Opinion Journal:

President Obama has started to play the "catastrophe" card to sell his economic stimulus plan, using yesterday's terrible January jobs report to predict doom unless Congress acts. No doubt he'll get his way, but the tragedy of this first great effort of the Obama Presidency is what a lost opportunity it is.

Everyone agrees that some kind of fiscal stimulus might help the economy, and that running budget deficits is appropriate in a recession. The stage was thus set for the popular President to forge a bipartisan consensus that combined ideas from both parties. A major cut in the corporate tax favored by Republicans could have been added to Democratic public works spending for a quick political triumph that might have done at least some economic good.

Instead, Mr. Obama chose to let House Democrats write the bill, and they did what comes naturally: They cleaned out their intellectual cupboards and wrote a bill that is 90% social policy, and 10% economic policy. (See here for a case study.) It is designed to support incomes with transfer payments, rather than grow incomes through job creation.

This is the reason the bill has run into political trouble, despite a new President with 65% job approval. The 11 Democrats who opposed it in the House didn't do so because they want to hand Mr. Obama a defeat. The same is true of the Senate moderates of both parties working to trim their $900 billion version. They've acted because they can't justify a vote for so much spending for so little economic effect. You know a piece of legislation is in trouble when even its authors begin to deny paternity, as economist Martin Feldstein has recently done.

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It appears that this catastrophe will pass with two Republican votes. More Democrats voted against the bill than Republicans voted for it. So much for a post partisan presidency. Back when President Bush tried to put a majority together to pass legislation the Democrats railed against Republicans picking off a couple of Democrats to pass it. Now that is the game they play, but they can hardly call this catastrophe bipartisan.

Just as the Great Society killed off the black family, this legislation will do untold harm to all Americans.

It will stimulate debate on what is wrong with the Democrat party.