There was a commercial not too long ago where a young man looked out his window to the village green where a bundle of money had just fallen.  He calls his wife/girlfriend over to show her.  She suggests running down and getting it, but he says, no, let’s wait.  Next you see a frizzy headed guy down on the green who screams, “MONEY!!!!”  In seconds, people came out of the woodwork and scoffed up all the money while the young couple looked on.

The image of that commercial popped into my head as I considered the job summit being led by President Obama.  To me, the young couple represented the government pondering how to direct the economy to achieve this specific goal or that.  The mob on the green was the free market.  While the government dithers over what kind of legislation to write, which special interest groups to pay off to pass it, how to develop incentives to get private industry to do this or that, if they would just cut taxes and get out of the way, the free market would get to work creating jobs where they are needed, not where some bureaucrat thinks they should go.

Uncertainty

The biggest cloud overhanging this economy is uncertainty.  The Obama administration is slamming through enormous changes: a $787 billion Porkulus package, cap and trade, health care.  Businesses look at this combined with the accumulation of massive government debt, tax increases rather than cuts (yes letting the Bush tax cuts expire is a tax increase, not just the expiration of tax cuts as Speaker Pelosi tries to spin it) and they don’t know what hiring that extra employee is going to cost, let alone what it will cost to keep the employees they already have.  So they don’t hire until the dust  settles and they can calculate the impact.

“Tax incentives for job creation are “worthy of further consideration,” he said, while adding that the administration is also set on making a big push in the area of green jobs.” – President Obama at Jobs Summit

“Worthy of further consideration”?  Since conservatives have been calling for tax cuts for a year now, this kind of statement in Obama-ese translates thusly, “I have to make a nod to the right, to acknowledge that I heard them, but it ain’t happening.”  Couple that with the “big push in the area of green jobs.”  We are in the midst of the scientific scandal that the “settled science” of man-made global warming could be the greatest hoax since Bernie Madoff, and Obama wants a big push in the area of green jobs.  What if that area collapses because the urgency that Al Gore has been screaming about is no longer urgent?  It’s government planning on the order of Soviet five-year plans or Mao’s Great Leap Forward programs.  It harkens back to Jimmy Carter’s giant Synfuels project that was going to convert coal into oil, until oil prices fell and the project imploded, but not before billions of tax dollars were poured into that rat hole.

How Simulating!

If you listen to Joe Biden, the stimulus plan is working better than expected.  But let’s take a closer look.  As of about three weeks ago only $120 billion of the stimulus money had been spent. (So why is Congress looking at another stimulus with over $600 billion left to spend in the first one?)  Of that money, 80% went to the Department of Education, Health and Human Services, and the Department of Labor.  What about all the “shovel ready” projects?  Only about $4 billion has gone to the Department of Transportation.  Feel better?

Jobs Summit Attendees

So who is meeting with President Obama at the jobs summit?  Well first let’s look at who was not invited:

• U.S. Chamber of Commerce — they have butted heads with Obama over health care and climate change policies
• National Federation of Independent Businesses

I don’t know about you, but I think they might have an idea or two about how to create conditions that let the free market create jobs.  As for the attendees:

• Service Employees International Union (SEIU) officer
• President of the American Federation of Teachers — a union of workers in a government run monopoly
• United Food & Commercial Workers International Union
• CEOs of some Fortune 500 companies

How many jobs do unions create, not occupy, create?  Think of the auto industry, steel industry, public K-12 education, the Postal Service, and government in general.  Do they bring images of thriving, vibrant, engines of job creation?  Or is the image more of the basket cases of the U.S. economy?  This is not a slight against the union workers themselves, but rather of their leadership who create so many restrictions on job rules to artificially create the need for more jobs.  There motto is: why have three people do the work, when you have five do it?

As far as big business is concerned, let me dispel the thought that conservatives and big business go hand in hand.  In many cases big business looks to cut deals with the government to protect their industries and markets from upstart companies.  They have gotten big and lethargic, rather than nimble and vibrant.  Small businesses create about 80% of the jobs in the U.S. and they didn’t have a seat at the table.

So was the jobs summit about creating jobs or just jive talk?  If you want a real jobs summit see what American Solutions was hosting in Cincinnati, Ohio and Jackson, Mississippi.  They actually discussed ideas that would work.

In 1956 the Federal Highway Act was signed into law creating the Interstate Highway system that today is 47,000 miles long.  The bill that created that was 29, that’s not a typo, 29 pages long.  Who could not read through a 29 page bill before deciding whether or not to vote for or against?

In this Congress we had a stimulus bill that was over 1,000 pages long, a cap and trade bill that was over 1,000 pages long, and health care reform that is sure to be over 1,000 pages long.  Who could possibly read over 3,000 pages of legislation and make any kind of intelligent vote on it.  I don’t know about you, but I have read regulatory “prose” and after 10 pages or so, I need to take a walk around and get a cup of coffee, just to clear my head.

Why Are These Bills So Long?

Someone once asked, “Where is the best place to hide a tree?”  Answer: “In a forest.”  A 1,000 page bill is a very good forest.  Arlen Spector just introduced legislation to help tort lawyers make more money from frivolous lawsuits.  Consider this:

To show what a loyal tort-lobby servant he is, Mr. Specter has also introduced a bill to let attorneys claim an up-front tax deduction on expenses they incur while building contingency fee cases. Amazing but true: Mr. Specter wants to give a tax cut to sustain the likes of Mel Weiss or Dickie Scruggs in the yachts to which they have become accustomed while they await jackpot jury verdicts. Even Democrats are too embarrassed by this giveaway (estimated cost: $1.6 billion) to pass it as a stand-alone bill, so tort lobbyist Linda Lipsen recently said “we have to tuck it into something” else, such as another “tax vehicle.” {emphasis added}

What better place to hide something like this than a 1,000 page bill?  Add to that the URGENCY that everything has to be passed NOW so that for those who want to read the bill to find these stinkers to oppose them there is no time before Nancy Pelosi rams that through.

It seems like it is us against them.  They have gotten into power and their top priority is to stay there.  Representing us?  That ended on election night.

Baby's Not Happy About the Stimulus Bill She's Stuck With

The colorful brochure arrived in the mail today titled, “Fighting For Long Island.”  In it Congressman Tim Bishop extols the virtues of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and how much bacon he brought home for the district.  Inside the folder is a map of the 1st Congressional District with callout balloons showing all the locations where stimulus money will land.  On first blush one is tempted to think, good job Congressman!  But then I reached for the calculator.

By the Numbers

If you take the $787 billion and divide it by the 535 members of Congress (425 Congressman and 100 Senators) the stimulus bill works out to $1.47 billion per member.  That’s a lot of dough.  I then took out my calculator and tallied up all the monies on the map that “CONGRESSMAN TIM BISHOP Delivers Economic Recovery Funds To Long Island.”  Just to be sure, I checked my numbers three times and the projects added up to $274 million. That’s not good.  That means that our Congressman brought home less than 19% of his share, which means that a lot more backslapping members of Congress got more than their share.  Throw into the mix that every Republican voted against the bill and probably were not considered too kindly on the receiving end, then we really got short changed.

Money In vs. Money Out

Although there are many people who like to believe that Uncle Sam is really some independently wealthy tycoon who showers his neices and nephews with his largess, the sad reality is that the money all comes from us.  So I wondered how much do we send to the Treasury?

The federal government does a pretty good job of concealing how taxes are broken down by congressional district, which is understandable as accountability at election time can be problematic.  In 2004 the First Congressional District in New York ranked 60th in the nation in average income tax liability per tax return, at $8,310 per return.  What percentile is that?  Let’s see 60 out of 435 comes out to be about the 14th percentile, well above the midpoint.  How much stimulus did our esteemed representative bring home?  Somewhere around the 81st percentile well below the midpoint.  So the bottom line is that our Congressman voted to have his constituents pay a very large share of stimulus money that will go to every other part of the country, while we spend years working off the debt.  Brilliant!

Historically, New York gets about $0.79 from the federal government for every $1 that New Yorkers pay in taxes.  So why do New Yorkers keep overwhelmingly electing Democrats to Congress who love to increase taxes that ultimately end up being sent to other states?  Who are they working for (perhaps themselves)?

The Stimulus Was Really About Jobs

So let’s not get bogged down in costs when it’s jobs we’re really talking about.  After all, passing the stimulus would keep the unemployment rate at 8% instead of 9% without it.  Oops, it’s already at 9.5% and climbing.

Of all the projects identified on the map of the district, one had an actual figure, in bold, stating that it would create 1,000 jobs.  That’s a nice figure, but let’s put it in perspective.  There are about 233,000 people employed in the district. At a 9.5% unemployment rate that would mean about 22,135 jobs have been lost in this recession.  So creating 1,000 jobs equates to about 0.4% employment.  The particular project that was identifed with creating these 1,000 jobs was getting $184.3 million in stimulus money or two-thirds of all the stimulus in the district.  That works out to us spending $187,300 per job created.  Call me a conservative, but somehow I think that if we cut taxes by $184.3 million we would create a lot more than 1,000 jobs.  But what we will have to do is raise taxes to cover the $184.3 million that we are spending to create these jobs which will probably turn right around and kill them or an equivalent number.

What Federalism Means to Me

Here is a “top ten” list of stimulus projects compiled by Senator Tom Coburn [R-OK]:

1. “Free” Stimulus Money Results in Higher Utility Costs for Residents of Perkins, Oklahoma
2. FutureGen: The Stimulus Earmark that Wasn’t, Becomes the Costliest Pork Project in History
3. Little-Used “Shovel-Ready” Bridges in Rural Wisconsin Given Priority Over Widely Used Structurally Deficient Bridges
4. $800,000 for little-used Johnstown, Pennsylvania airport to repave a back-up runway; the “Airport for Nobody” Has Already Received Tens of Millions in Taxpayer dollars
5. $3.4 Million for Wildlife “Eco-Passage” in Florida; Project Still May Take Years to Finish
6. Nevada Non-Profit Gets Weatherization Contract After Being Fired For Same Work
7. Non-Existent Oklahoma Lake in Line for Over $1 Million To Construct a New Guardrail
8. Taxpayers Taken for a Ride: Nearly $10 Million to be Spent to Renovate a Century Old Train Station that Hasn’t Been Used in 30 Years
9. Ten Thousand Dead People Get Stimulus Checks, Social Security Administration Blames a Tough Deadline
10. Town of Union, New York, Encouraged to Spend Money It Did Not Request For a Homelessness Problem It Does Not Have

Now if someone in Florida (No. 5) want to spend $3.4 million for a wildlife “eco-passsage” (i.e., roadway tunnel for turtles)  project, fine.  The good people of Florida can pay for it.  If the people of John Murtha’s district  want to spend $800,000 (No. 4)  to repave a backup runway in Johnstown, fine.  Let those folks pay for it.

If it doesn’t cross a state line, or have a benefit for ALL Americans, it’s not the federal government’s business.  That is my litmus test for federalism.  There is nothing more idiotic than having me pay for your project while you pay for mine.  Because it comes down to a perpetual power grab where those who stay in the government the longest get everyone to pay for their projects (so their constituents will re-elect them) and everyone else gets the bill.  Just ask yourself how many federal functions have been moved to West Virginia (Robert Byrd 50+ years in the Senate).  How much pork goes in to John Murtha’s district (38 years in Congress).

Spinning it for All it’s Worth

So look for the brightly colored brochure from your Congressman crowing about how many stimulus dollars they brought home, but just remember, if your Congressman hasn’t been serving for 20 years, he or she probably got fleeced and you got screwed.  Enjoy holding the bag.

Can we please get this guy off the stage before my IRA is completely worthless?  We had a break from him yesterday and the markets rose and then he goes on national television last night re-emphasizing how he was going to tax and spend and in 30 minutes the market is down 130 points.  The market has fallen over 2,000 points since he was elected.

President Obama insists that we need to squeeze more out of the productive people in this country, after all they became rich by creating wealth, jobs, companies, innovations, etc.  Obama’s idea of a “good” tax cut is $8 a week for 95% of Americans.  $8 a week will buy exactly what?  It won’t by the RVs that the people in Elkhart, Indiana make where Obama made one of his pitches for the stimulus package.

Nancy Pelosi looked like a grinning jack-in-the-box last night popping up with every other sentence to applaud the President’s speech.  I don’t know about you, but to me that’s a dead giveaway, we’re in trouble.  After loading up the stimulus bill with pork and ramming it through before anyone could read it (but President Obama didn’t see the urgency to sign it for four more days), you can see she is thrilled to have the opportunity to offer up more spending.  The new spending bill that is about to be released is reported to include 9,000 EARMARKS!!! Haven’t we spent enough?  This is beyond out of control.  Nancy Pelosi cannot control her glee at how easily she is putting this all past the American people.

But the bill will be coming due, and it won’t be Nancy Pelosi who pays it.  It will be you and me, and she will laugh all the way to her retirement with her millions.

Frank Schaeffer writes in the Huffington Post, under the headline Republicans: “Go To Hell America”, 100% Partisan Vote”, about the vote on the so-called stimulus package.  As Shakespeare said, “Me thinks he doth protest too much.”  In actuality it was a bi-partisan vote, bi-partisan against the stimulus package.

Stimulus?

As more details about this pork-a-palooza come out the American people grow more concerned and less supportive as evidenced by a recent Rasmussen poll with support slipping from 45% to 42% and opposition growing from 34% to 39% with 19% undecided.  Which means that 3% moved from the support column and 2% from the undecided column into the opposition column.  In other words, more people supported John McCain than support this package, and McCain lost.

So why is Frank Schaeffer on the verge of having a stroke over this?  When you look more closely it’s pretty clear.  By all Republicans voting against the measure, they did not give the Democrats the fig leaf they were looking for.  If this is truly a stimulus package and if the Democrats need no Republican votes to pass it, then pass it and take all the credit when the economy rockets to life.  The dirty little secret is that the Democrats really don’t believe this is a stimulus package at all.

The Big Payoff

The purpose of this package is to help the Democrats to consolidate power.  It begins by paying back those who supported them.  Why else is there money in the package for Hollywood, family planning, teacher’s unions, massive transfers of money from the federal to the state governments?  The “tax stimulus” of about $10 per week, is aimed at those who pay little to no income taxes.  “If I give you a check for nothing today, will you give me your vote in 2010?”  They are pushing to reach that tipping point where the majority of voters pay no income tax and maybe even get checks from the government.  Once that magical 50% line is crossed look out.  By having majority rule, they can then jack up the tax rates on “the rich” to astronomical levels, and there is little that can be done about it short of another revolution.  Remember those famous words, “Taxation without Representation”?  And why should it matter to rich Democrats, since they don’t pay the taxes they owe anyway (Rangel, Daschle, Geithner).

The Republicans could have done a great thing for their party and the country: sent a message to the world — we stand together! Imagine the impact on tomorrow’s stock market, and our enemy’s view of America and our standing in the world if instead of a partisan Republican “NO” vote the backing of the recovery plan had been unanimous approval! — Schaeffer

Sorry, comrade, it’s time for Mr. Schaeffer to get a reality check.  First of all that was a bipartisan NO! Second, the stock market has fallen 1,600 points since Obama was elected.  That’s not exactly a vote of confidence from the financial markets.  Look, the measure passed.  If it is a truly good stimulus package the stock market should rise on that alone.  Does he think Wall Street cares whose vote is in which column?  Please!

The Republicans might have then shared the credit, even won a few elections in the future. Now their fate is sealed. Obama will succeed. America won’t forget who to thank. — Schaeffer

You would think that Mr. Schaeffer was born yesterday.  This package was put together by President, I mean, Speaker Pelosi.  She gave the back of her hand to the Republicans.  They had no role to play in putting this package together, so let’s put the bipartisan rhetoric back in the museum case where it belongs.  President Obama’s dinner with conservative writers, his cocktail parties, his Capital Hill meetings with Republicans were all just PR and window dressing if they have no input on the legislation.  When asked if the package was bipartisan, Speaker Pelosi said that depends on how the Republicans vote.  In other words, if they vote for what we are trying to cram down their throats, its bipartisan, if not, well just call on Frank Schaeffer to scream FOUL!

If he wants a true stimulus package, cut the pork, cut the unnecessary spending, eliminate the capital gains tax and cut tax rates, not give out $10 per week that will barely buy a pizza.  If you want to build a serious stimulus package, I am sure the Republicans would stand ready to work with President Obama, but it’s time for President Obama to realize that he’s the one with the 70% approval rating not Nancy Pelosi, whose Congress has approval ratings in the single digits.  He should take the lead not follow hers.  But for now someone has to watch the American people’s backs and their wallets, and that, my friends, are the conservative Republicans.

President Barack Obama, took office with historically high approval ratings.  Congress ended its last session with historically low approval ratings.  So why is Barack Obama, the head of the Democratic Party, taking a back seat on the economic stimulus bill while Nancy Pelosi calls the shots?

President Obama campaigned on ending the divisiveness in Washington, as did George Bush, but bipartanship is far more than dinner parties with conservative columnists, cocktails with leaders of Congress, welcoming ideas from Republicans that will eventually be ignored by Speaker Pelosi.  If bipartanship was one of your themes, pay attention, there was bipartanship on the stimulus vote, it was bipartisan opposition.

Taking family planning and some sod for the Washinton Mall out of the package, does not magically turn this turkey into a stimulus.  It’s time for President Obama to do some arm twisting within his own party or his critical first 100 days will be a flameout.  Take a lesson from history, Presidents Carter and Clinton both took office with large Democratic majorities in Congress and tried to please them and neither could.  Clinton had a Republican Congress two years later and ended up with a pretty successful presidency.  Carter didn’t.

It’s your adminsitration Mr. President, don’t let Nancy Pelosi snuff it out.

The tax cut side of the Obama stimulus package relies on what will be $500 per individual and $1000 per couple.  Do you remember the stimulative effect of the $300 tax rebate of 2008?  If you think about it, it comes out to about $10 per week for an individual and $20 per week for a couple.  Here in New York that will get the lovely couple a pizza pie, some soda, and a couple of dollars change.  Wow!  I can see the hiring binge that the pizza parlours, the sauce and cheese vendors, and the carboard box makers will embark upon.  We should have 4.1 million new jobs in no time.

But the class warfare crowd just can’t bring themselves to admit that the elimination of the capital gains tax, and an across the board tax rate cut is the best way to stimulate the economy, because some people who are wealthy might get a tax cut when they’re the people we’re supposed to be soaking.  As for me, I much prefer the rich to put their money in play, rather than give it to the government to spend as those bureaucrats see fit.  I just don’t think they are that good at it.

What do you think?

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan was unveiled today.  Well, a little short on details, but if there is anything true about Washington, it’s that the first thing you have to do is come up with a catchy name.  Once you craft a name that is as American as Motherhood and apple pie, the details are only a distraction.  You have to start with a name that members of Congress would be afraid to vote against.  “You mean, Congressman, that you are opposed to recovery?  And you’re against reinvestment?”  You can hear Katie Couric incredulously asking that question as the Congressman, undoubtedly Republican, struggles for an answer.

Mr. Obama said in his speech:

“It is true that we cannot depend on government alone to create jobs or long-term growth, but at this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe,” Mr. Obama said. “Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy — where a lack of spending leads to lost jobs which leads to even less spending; where an inability to lend and borrow stops growth and leads to even less credit.”

Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy?  Okay, so the government is going to borrow and spend $1 trillion dollars, give or take a few billion, and that is going to solve the problem.  Borrow and Spend?  Isn’t that how we got here?

Between Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, The Community Reinvestment Act, Janet Reno in the Clinton Administration threatening banks if they didn’t make enough subprime loans, we had the housing bubble.  Millions of people borrowing money they couldn’t pay back for the sub prime people, and millions of people borrowing against the equity in their homes so they could spend on the good life.  The bubble burst, housing prices collapsed, mortgages went under water, and a deep recession followed.

So Barack Obama proposes borrowing $1 trillion and, unless he has a very large piggy bank from where he’s getting it, spending it to get the economy moving again.  If a significant number of Americans can’t manage their debts now, how are they going to shoulder another $1 trillion?  Let’s not forget, it’s We The People, the government is us.  There is no rich Uncle Sam who made a killing in pork bellies, who is going to foot the bill.  It is us, our children, and our grandchildren.  What we have to do is live within our means.

• Make the Bush tax cuts permanent.  That will remove the uncertainty that has been hanging over the economy ever since the presidential campaign, blaming Bush for tax cuts for the rich.  Face it, folks, tax cuts work best when they are given to people who actually pay taxes.
• Take the tax code and shred it and recycle it.  Let’s go to a flat tax that you can file your return on a post card.  It may put a lot of accountants out of work, but it costs Americans about $200 billion a year to prepare.  After five years that’s $1 trillion back in the economy.
• Cut the federal government down to size.  Start with the Department of Education.  Since 1980 Congress has appropriated $1.06 trillion to the Department of Education.  How’s that working out?  My father dropped out of high school in 1934, and I would put him up against many of today’s high school “graduates” in being able to put a sentence togther properly.  So what has all this education spending gotten us?  I’ll wait………….  Still scratching your head, I’m not surprised.  I know it’s gotten us a lot of teachers.  When your goal is smaller classrom sizes, rather than results, the only result you get is bigger payrolls.  So not only has the Department of Education squandered $1 trillion, many school districts have seen their property taxes skyrocket.  Why?  Well, once you hire all those teachers you have to pay them and in many, if not most areas, that funding comes from property taxes.  So the Department of Education hits your left pocket for $1 trillion and your tax assessor hits your right pocket, and what do we have to show for it?  Many colleges now have to teach remedial classes to their incoming freshman to get them up to a level where they can handle freshman courses.
• Social Security and Medicare — These have to be tackled NOW.  This is the next ticking time bomb.  Social Security is a ponzi scheme that makes Bernie Madoff look like a piker.  Social Security’s inflation adjusted rate of return is about 1.23%.  Any effort by Bush to allow future retiree’s to divert a portion of their contributions into a fund that gets a better return, was shouted down by the Democrats and demonized as trying to starve granny.  Well, keep yukking it up, and call for another round of drinks, but the bill is coming due and when it does there will be no where to hide, and we better not be trying to digest Obama’s trillion dollar deficits at the same time.
• Couple saving Social Security with term limits.  If you are not a politician for life, you might have the guts to do some heavy lifting, but if you are always running for office and your goal is to offend as few people as possible and give out government goodies to as many people as possible, you are naturally disposed to make the government bigger and delay any tough decisions until after you’re.  So don’t fix Social Security, just make it solvent long enough for you to pick up your spoils and go home.
• Campaign Finance Reform — this folly gets rolled out around each election.  Here’s my modest solution.  If you hack back the size of government, there will be a lot less for lobbyists to lobby about.  If they have nothing to lobby about, they will have to go find something else to do. For those that are left, it will be a lot easier to see what they’re up to, since there won’t be that many of them.
• Go back to every government agency and look at the legislation that created them.  Has that original mission been accomplished?  If so, shut them down.  When I worked in telecommunications, one of the Federal Regulatory bodies was the Rural Electrification Administration.  This agency was created during the Great Depression to bring electricity to farms.  I wondered what that had to do with telephones.  Well, the problem of bringing electricity to farms was pretty much solved, so they needed to do something else, so why not telephones.  I am sure that cell phones will be next if they are not already working on that.  But what we should really do, what we should have done years ago, is throw a nice party, thank all the employers and managers for a job well done, send them on their way and put the buildings up for sale.  But that doesn’t happen in Washington, agencies created for one purpose just morph into something else.
• Following on the previous point is the Department of Agriculture.  It was raised to cabinet level in 1889.  In 1870, 70%-80% of the population worked on farms.  Today that percentage is 2%-3%.  So why do we still need a Department of Agriculture? Today it has an annual budget of $95 billion, so in the next ten years about $1 trillion will be spent in the Department of Agriculture.  The Federal beast grows without bounds.

There you have it, $3 trillion between tax filing, the Department of Education, and the Department of Agriculture.

The federal government must tighten its belt like everyone else and stop soaking up an increasing share of the economy.  Barack Obama and the federal government aren’t going to create jobs unless it is by making the beast bigger.  The majority of jobs are created in this country by small businesses.  What this economy needs is a degree of certainty.

If Obama really believes in fiscal discipline he should say the bailout window is closed.  It was opened to keep money flowing during a crisis, now all companies should get off the line, and go back to running their businesses.  As long as the window stays open there is uncertainty.  Can I get a bailout?  That company got a bailout, why not me?

What roils the markets is uncertainty.  If the market doesn’t know if the government is going to act or not act;  if the Bush tax cuts are going to continue or be rolled back;  if the auto companies are going to get bailed out or not;  is the government going to spend a trillion or not.  The U.S. economy and the American people can work this out.  The more government stays involved, the longer the uncertainty will remain, and the longer and deeper the recession will be.

As General Patton said, “Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.”