Posted by Donny Ferguson at LP.org. Reposted to IPR by Paulie.
From Wayne Root’s Root For America blog. Read the entire entry here.
For weeks I’ve been interviewed nonstop in the media about President Obama’s Economic Stimulus Plan. Again and again, even conservative hosts said to me, “Well we have to do something. What would you do?” My answer is that sometimes the best choice is to do nothing. The response from talk show hosts and experts was always the same, “Huh? Are you mad? Do nothing?”
Well sometimes no decision is better than a rush-to-judgment. Sometimes “do no harm” is more important (and more successful) than “do something at all costs.” Shouldn’t we have learned that lesson from our decision to invade Iraq to stop Saddam Hussein from using his Weapons of Mass Destruction (that never existed)? Why rush our decisions? Why rush multi-billion or multi-trillion dollar decisions that could make or break our entire American economy? Why not step back, breathe deep, listen to economists on both sides of the argument and slowly, deliberately make decisions after months of deliberations and debate.
Didn’t we already rush a trillion dollar decision only a few months ago with the bailout? Did that work out well? The bailout can only be described as a disaster. Didn’t we hear the same arguments from politicians? That “without the bailout the economy will crater?” Well we rushed to judgment with the bailout because of the hysteria. The result- we’ve wasted trillions of taxpayer dollars, dramatically increased our deficit and national debt, damaged (if not destroyed) capitalism and free markets, and the result is…NOTHING. The bailouts have not improved the economy, the job losses, or the credit freeze…
Read the entire entry here.