W... T... F ???

[WillyT]

Obama Blames Insufficient Stimulus on Ben Nelson and Olympia Snowe, Suggests FDR was “Irresponsible”
By: Blue Texan
Thursday October 28, 2010 10:45 am

<snip>

President Obama sat down with some progressive bloggers yesterday for a Q&A, and this was one of his more puzzling responses.

I mean, if folks think that we could have gotten Ben Nelson, Arlen Specter and Susan Collins to vote for additional stimulus beyond the $700 billion that we got, then I would just suggest you weren’t in the meetings.

This notion that somehow I could have gone and made the case around the country for a far bigger stimulus because of the magnitude of the crisis, well, we understood the magnitude of the crisis. We didn’t actually, I think, do what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, which was basically wait for six months until the thing had gotten so bad that it became an easier sell politically because we thought that was irresponsible. We had to act quickly.

Obama’s narrative doesn’t exactly jibe with reporting about the stimulus.

Summers did not include Romer’s $1.2-trillion projection <for the stimulus>. The memo argued that the stimulus should not be used to fill the entire output gap; rather, it was “an insurance package against catastrophic failure.” ...

He <Summers> believed that filling the output gap through deficit spending was important, but that a package that was too large could potentially shift fears from the current crisis to the long-term budget deficit, which would have an unwelcome effect on the bond market. In the end, Summers made the case for the eight-hundred-and-ninety-billion-dollar option.

Larry Summers’ conclusions about the size of the stimulus can’t be blamed on President Snowe. And it’s much closer to the $787B the administration finally got than the $1.2T Romer and people like Paul Krugman were recommmending.

The president’s willingness to ask for too little was, it turns out, a huge strategic error. It allows his opponents to argue that the Democrats had what they wanted, which then failed. If the president had failed to get what he demanded, he could argue that the outcome was not his fault.

When the stimulus passed, the White House celebrated. There was not the slightest hint that Nelson, Snowe, and Collins were hampering the recovery and putting the country in jeopardy. For Obama now to insist it was their fault that it was too small doesn’t ring true (not to mention that they could’ve passed a larger bill via reconciliation), and in any event, just makes him look weak.

But I really think the President’s remarks about FDR are just bizarre.

Here is a time-line of the “100 Days.”

March 4

Inauguration Day. Franklin Delano Roosevelt becomes President of the United States.

March 5

The President proclaims four-day Bank Holiday with the suspension of banking transactions and gold and currency exports.

March 9

Hundred Days Congressional session begins.
Congress passes the Emergency Banking Act.

March 15

Congress passes the Economy Act

March 31

Congress passes the Reforestation Relief Act, (establishing the Civilian Conservation Corps).

April 19

The President announces US departure from the gold standard.

May 12

Congress passes the Emergency Farm Mortgage Act.
Congress passes the Federal Emergency Relief Act.
The President signs the Agricultural Adjustment Act.

May 18

Congress establishes the Tennessee Valley Authority.

May 27

Congress passes the Federal Securities Act.

June 6

Congress passes the National Employment System Act.

June 13

Congress passes the Home Owners Refinancing Act.

June 16

The end of the Hundred Days session.
Congress passes the National Industrial Recovery Act, (setting up the National Recovery Administration), the Farm Credit Act, and the Banking Act of 1933.

Now that’s some change we can believe in — all in about 3 months! And that doesn’t include the repeal of Prohibition.

The merits of the legislation aside, it’s more than a little jarring to hear a Democratic President accuse FDR of acting irresponsibly in the face of the Great Depression. Moreover, had the Obama administration acted more like Roosevelt’s, they would not be in the situation they find themselves in.

<snip>

Link: http://firedoglake.com/2010/10/28/obama-blames-insufficient-stimulus-on-ben-nelson-and-olympia-snowe-suggests-fdr-was-irresponsible/

:banghead::banghead::banghead:

:wtf:

:beer:

:smoke:

[mdmc]

1. Perhaps that is why single payer was "OFF THE TABLE"

Let us suffer enough without affordable medical treatment and perhaps we will turn off the big screen tv long enough to insist on CHANGE..

[boston bean]

2. yep

that is what I was talking about here, where you can read some of the usual responses:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=9407915&mesg_id=9407915

[WillyT]

3. Just Recced Your Thread

First I'd heard of this was the FDL piece.

He knocks FDR to PROGRESSIVE BLOGGERS???

Holy shit...

:wtf:

:shrug:

[boston bean]

6. I rec'd yours too!

I think the President is tired of being held to the FDR standard so he tried to bring FDR down a notch.

[fascisthunter]

4. Well, I'm Sure the Anti-FDR New Deal Crowd will be Impressed

or at least that's what I think he is trying to do.

[ThomCat]

12. Yes, he's polishing his corporate, conservative credentials.

Those guys hate unions, government reforms and intervention of any kind, and anything that protects the little guys from companies, from poverty, or from greed.

As if Obama hasn't already proven his credentials as the Goldman Sachs President who sold us all out to the insurance industry...

We all keep waiting for the day Obama will decide to somehow prove his liberal credentials, assuming he has some. I don't see it happening.

[fascisthunter]

36. yeah... I gave up on hoping to see the same

he's not what was advertised, that's for sure. He can make all the pretty speeches he wants, but actions and inactions speak much louder to me.

[Hawkowl]

5. "Summers did a heckova job"

This is why I think Obama wasn't kidding when he joked about Summers doing a heck of a job, indirectly comparing him to Bush's "Brownie's" performance during hurricane Katrina. He KNOWS Summers fucked it up and that is why he will be leaving after the midterms.

I don't expect the president to come right out and say this. His humor and the fact Summers and Rahm are out on their asses is enough to restore some hope in me.

[Kurovski]

8. I'm cozying up to that theory.

[boston bean]

14. What did he mean by "pun intended". I don't get it.

Did it mean he knew Summers was as incompetent as Brownie?

[tavalon]

23. No, he was caught off guard by the audience and tried to recover

I think he meant pun not intended. But I don't reside in his head, so I could be wrong.

[ThomCat]

7. WTF! Obama is attacking FDR to try to make himself not look so liberal.

:wtf:

We get it, Obama. You're hate being called a liberal. You're willing to bash liberals. You're willing to work with the right wing, but not the left wing.

You're even willing to lie about history now to make yourself look good. :(

Obama isn't nearly the president FDR was. We desperately need a president more like FDR, and unfortunately, Obama is proving more and more that he isn't capable of being that president.

[unc70]

41. Obama attacked the 60's in his initial candidacy declaration

It became clearer with his comments later in the primary campaign. I have several rants down in my journal archive.

[Yeshuah Ben Joseph]

9. If Obama is not a member of the DLC, then why does he keep taking bad advice from them?

The DLC has been blatantly anti-FDR and anti-New Deal from Day One.

Real Democrats recognize that FDR was the greatest president of the 20th Century.

[Individualist]

11. NDC is a subsidiary of DLC.

[HughMoran]

10. FDL

:thumbsdown:

[boston bean]

13. Would you like me to post the transcript? Maybe then you can comment on the Presidents words. nt

edited to add the word "me"

[donco6]

17. Quotes burn his eyes. n/t

[Bluenorthwest]

15. FDR

Greatest Democratic President, and will be for my lifetime as well as my father's. Franklin and Eleanor.

[Enthusiast]

34. No question about it.

Revisionists disagree, however.

[treestar]

16. I think you're deliberately taking it the wrong way

He said he thought it would be irresponsible for himself, now. This happened in 2009 and was different from 1933. He appears to be responding to an assertion that he should have done exactly the same.

Further, Nelson and the others are responsible. They are responsible for what they do. They are conservative enough to put a drag on the stimulus.

Quit making a deity of FDR. It's ridiculous. What happened was 70 years ago.

[donco6]

18. Yeah - everyone knows there's only room for one deity. n/t

[WillyT]

19. Curiously... Most Presidential Historians Put Two Presidents At The Head Of The Class...

Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

If Obama keeps going like he's going... he won't even make the top 20.

He has the potential, but apparently lacks the will.

:shrug:

And speaking of holding a President up as a deity...

Well, I'll just not go there right now.

[Enthusiast]

35. If we appreciate the actions of FDR

we are making him a deity? I know ridiculous.

[jgraz]

20. Bizarre is the right word for it.

First he praises Reagan, now he shits on FDR. If Obama was a DU member, he'd already be TSed.

[phleshdef]

21. So, the OP thinks it would have been responsible to wait until almost Jul 09 to pursue stimulus.

Geez, what a over-reactive pile of crap this is.

[TheKentuckian]

25. It should have ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, been pitched as too small

Reality is it needed to be staggering like 2.5T staggering which would choke about anybody right of Bernie Sanders and he'd probably swallow pretty hard.

I accepted what we got believing the President would have the plain old horsesense to know that 700-800B wouldn't cut it under any possible circumstance and not a prayer once tax cuts became such a big chunk which really reduced the multiplier effect (and screwed up the politics) and spacing the puny (in scale to our desperate need) infrastructure spending out for political purposes (summer of recovery anyone?).

He did not, instead it was historic achievement city and bragging on the biggest ever like that is relevant to dealing with a crisis. If the problem was magnitudes smaller then it would be stupid to spend so much money and this deal is a fucking doombringer and "biggest ever" makes no difference if it is a drop in the bucket.

The people could be rallied if they are given the straight dope. He has never hammered on our insane infrastructure deficit and painted the picture of our great need and the drag it has on our economy. People, we're talking a 2T damn near Manhattan Project to get our dilapidated shit just to fucking code. Never mind for a moment how out of date we are and actually need to update to remain competitive with the growing number of nations that are now more advanced than us in this crucial area.

The incredible destruction of jobs and wages should have been shouted from the roof tops and the interconnectedness we all have and the domino effect these losses and existing hole would cause.

He could have preached about the death spiral the foreclosure crisis is.

He could have laid it all out over and over and then if we got we got he$ at least be able to come back with his original message and how right he was.

Insisting on more or bust is not the same as pleading for more and taking what could be wrung out.

The crisis was grossly underestimated and faith in the standard neoliberal cures was misplaced.

Don't act like he wasn't told this. Stop pouting like brats when he is chastised for his folly.

[WillyT]

26. + 1,000,000,000... What You Said...

:applause::applause::applause:

:kick:

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[tavalon]

22. FDR wasnot acting irresponsibly, but politically

Obama chose responsibility and therefore got us the great recession instead of the great depression. Had he waited the six months that you yourself just showed before the NRA was established, it would have been a political coup and we would have been in the first few months of the second great depression, thanks to Bush the Lesser. You proved what you complained about in your own OP. Go ahead and list all of Obama's accomplishments in his first 100 days and they will stack up but they won't end with the NRA or even the necessary amount of stimulus to avoid the recession, because Obama, sitting in the chair that FDR once sat in, couldn't stomach the politically necessary.

BTW, before you call me a cheerleader, look at my last 6 months of posting. I have been infuriated at this administration. That said, what I learned last night on the Presidents interview with Jon Stewart has made me realize that we have a wonk rather than a firebrand, and while I desperately wanted the firebrand, I didn't want a second depression.

[Name removed]

24. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[sufrommich]

27. Jesus H. Christ, Obama was not bashing FDR.

This is too stupid for words.

[ProSense]

28. "This is too stupid for words."

Not for someone named Blue Texan.

[Axrendale]

29. It's not exactly unprecedented for Democratic Presidents to criticize FDR

Lyndon B. Johnson did it in 1965, when he asserted in an interview that his own methods for forcing the cooperation of the various branches of government to enact a legislative program were superior to those of the 32nd POTUS, as well as heavily implying that he regarded his Great Society as being a more effective program than the New Deal. This was in spite of the fact that he said of Roosevelt: "He was just like a Daddy to me" on more occaisons than can be counted, and was adament that he regarded FDR as having been the greatest man that he had ever known, and the greatest president in American history.

John F. Kennedy, another great admirer of Roosevelt (to the point where he made a frequent point before making important decisions of perusing the record to see if FDR had ever been faced with a similar situation, and how he had responded to it), was also known to criticize him on occaison, at one point making disparaging remarks about the Roosevelt administration's foreign policy style.

At the end of the day, criticisms of FDR not merely by Democratic Presidents, but in fact by virtually every POTUS since 1945 at some point or another, result more than anything else from the fact that to this day the occupant of the White House continues to live in the long shadow that the 32nd President continues to cast. Sooner or later modern presidents are always compared against FDR - how successful were their first Hundred Days, did they establish a connection with the American people, how good were they with the economy, was their foreign policy a success, did they enact an ambitious domestic agenda, etc - and in almost every instance are somehow found to be wanting. It's only natural that some of them, especially the Democrats, try to assert their own legacy a little.

In this specific instance, I wonder if Obama was not referring to FDR in 1933, but rather in 1937/38. The developments of Roosevelt's economic policy in that period would match Obama's words far better - as it was in this period that the 1937 budget-balancing debacle occurred, following which Roosevelt did indeed wait for a period of time until the political waters were running in his favor again before he forced through Congress an emergency spending bill that got the crisis under control.

[sufrommich]

30. Welcome to DU. Impressive post. nt

[WillyT]

32. Welcome To DU, Axrendale !!!

Most excellent post.

:toast::bounce::toast:

Glad ta have ya aboard!

:hi:

[Axrendale]

33. sufrommich and WillyT

- Thank you very much. :)

[unkachuck]

31. "...accuse FDR of acting irresponsibly..."

....only if your allegiance is to the corporate interest....

[ecstatic]

38. (reluctant) K & (eager) U

[Buns_of_Fire]

39. I didn't read it that way. Let me translate it a little as I read it...

We didn’t actually, I think, do what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, which was basically wait for six months until the thing had gotten so bad that it became an easier sell politically because we thought that was irresponsible. We had to act quickly.

My translation: We felt that we didn't have the option of waiting for a more politically advantageous climate -- we felt that we had to act quickly, and it would have been irresponsible for us to have acted any other way.

I don't see any FDR-bashing in there. Just a comparison of the differing conditions both Presidents had to deal with. YMMV.

Now, if you want to read "if folks think that we could have gotten Ben Nelson...to vote for additional stimulus beyond the $700 billion that we got, then I would just suggest you weren’t in the meetings" as "Ben Nelson should be strung up by his balls," I've got no problem with that...:evilgrin:

[dionysus]

40. FDL Willy strikes again!1!!

:rofl:

[MrsCorleone]

42. Ah, geez. Here we go yet again with FDL.

Haven't y'all figured out that FDL has credibility issues? Recall their blatant butchering of facts regarding Retardgate and UAWgate, just to name the two that come to mind. Just to give one example, FDL took the Retardgate story from the WSJ and completely reworded the content. FDL flat out lied to fit an agenda, whatever the f*ck that is/was. What ensued, was a blogosphere sh*storm of outrage based on purely fabricated crap, ala FauxNews style.

I know a lot of you trust FDL, but please check their sources and watch for deliberate fact twisting. Decide for yourselves whether or not their posts are based in reality (not intentional spin) and deserve the sensationalist reactions that often seem to follow.

Thanks.