CAC1001 said:
Obama saved the auto industry, but that was also partially a bailout for the unions; the Republicans said to let the auto companies go into bankruptcy, and in the end, that's what happened.
No one liquidated and we didn't lose another 50,000 jobs, plus the tens of thousands of jobs for suppliers, at the height of the crisis, which is what was on the horizon.
In terms of the current economy, one could also say that the President and the Congress had next to nothing to do with the recovery thus far, and if anything, hamstrung the economic recovery in their quest for healthcare and with massive stimulus. The economy heals itself (although I would give a lot of credit to Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve as well). The stimulus was not designed to be stimulative (very little infrastructure work) and was more of a wishlist of spending on programs Democrats have wanted.
Bernanke by no means believed the economy would heal itself. Being one of the foremost experts on the Depression, he feared that we were entering an unrecoverable depressionary spiral. Beyond that, capital injections are not going to hamstring an economic recovery. That is just silly. And health care couldn't derail anything given that it hadn't even passed until the recovery was well under way.
It was a combination of three reasons:
1) Try and provide healthcare for everyone
2) Bring costs down
3) The Democrats have been pushing for government control of healthcare for sixty years and knew this was likely their only chance
The problem is that one cannot increase coverage for everyone, bring down costs, and retain freedom of choice. Whenever Republicans brought up people losing freedom of choice, or rationing, or skyrocketing costs, they were criticized for scaremongering and twisting the facts. But the reality is one (or even more than one) of those will occur; the only alternative will be that the system simply will not cover everyone.
The Republicans were accused of fear mongering for their claims of a socialist agenda and a Government takeover of health care; pulling the plug on grandma and death panels, and claims of cutting benefits for the elderly, that were not being cut. Beyond that, we already have rationing in the form of denials and unaffordable insurance, many people already have
no choice for any form of health care, and we already see skyrocketing costs, much of which results from the lack of a single-payer system. Health care can be streamlined and the cost reduced but the free market has simply not led to that end. There are excessive expenditures for unnecessary technology, a ridiculous amount of paperwork that could easily be streamlined using modern electronics [what a concept!] for dozens of different payers, poor tracking of drugs and patient information that result in malpractice suits and human misery, and worst of all, too many people who don't participate in the system at all until they become a liablity.
Repeatedly putting the blame on the Republicans doesn't make it anymore true Ivan. The fact is the Congress was under Democratic control when this crisis occurred; if one wants to try the, "It happened on their watch" argument, well the financial system nearly collapsed on their (the Democrats') watch (although I wouldn't blame the Democrats either).
As for President Bush, well one can also try the, "It happened under his watch" claim as well, but that is assuming near God-like powers for any President to be able to spot when the financial system is about the collapse.
You had Barney Frank who said in 2007 that there was no housing bubble. In 2006, Ben Bernanke had given a speech talking about how the economy and markets had likely entered a new era.
Most of the economics establishment, the folks who study the economy and markets for a living, didn't see the crisis coming (although now that it happened, it seems everyone and their grandmother is claiming they saw it coming
)
The housing bubble was only the tip of the iceberg. The real killer was relentless drive towards deregulation of the financial sector. That is what ultimately did us in. Clinton was guilty of being the best Republican the Democrats ever produced, and it was he and GWB that stripped the regulations that helped to create this disaster. Moreover, at the heart of this are Republican, free-market principles. In fact, looking back at the debt to GDP ratio, we see the long slide into debt, and the loss of the middle class for that matter, all started with Reagonomics.
Even when the financial systems were collapsing, we still saw the unwaivering conservative ideology of non-intervention, even if it meant letting the country, if not he global economy, fail. It seemed the ideology was more important than the country! Recall that the Republicans blocked the first effort to bail out the banks. The next day, in fact, in the next minutes, the market was in near freefall.
Yes indeed, this crisis lands squarely in the laps of Republicans. More specifically, it is the result of Republican ideology and free-market principles.
