Opinion: Those 'disappointed' liberals

It’s not that Obama enthusiasts who now say that they are disappointed in Rosetta Stone V3
him have no grounds for feeling that way. (Conservatives and others who loath the man have a different set of grievances, and are another story.) But time and again tooth-achingly so these liberals are adamant about certain reasons for their disappointment that simply aren’t the case. Here are the most prevalent ones I hear stated often angrily. First: Obama should have dealt with job creation before he took up health care. Well, does anyone remember the stimulus bill? In one way or another, virtually all the stimulus bill was aimed at creating jobs through tax cuts for the middle class (most likely to spend the additional money); by helping hard-pressed states avoid laying off teachers and firefighters and such (the saved jobs so widely scoffed at), and through infrastructure projects and down payments on programs the administration desired. Some infrastructure projects turned out to be not so shovel-ready. Others were postponed until 2011-11, to keep the stimulus program from suddenly stopping. Thus some stimulus money is still sitting in government coffers, and Republicans keep trying to poach it for other programs. Yes, some odds and ends that were congressional favorites were thrown in, especially in the House, and it was a stretch to insist that all the provisions would create jobs in the near term. Some good ones, like restoring the appallingly deteriorated National Mall, got rejected because Rosetta Stone Arabic Software
Republicans ridiculed them as planting sod. Some objections were valid: Obama requested that they remove a family planning project, which Republicans merrily described as a program to distribute condoms. Next on the Democrats’ complaint list comes the insistence that the stimulus was too small. There’s now widespread agreement about this among Democrats, and many economists. But the plain fact is that $787 billion was the most the administration could win from Congress. Democratic congressional leaders had warned them to not go near asking for $1 trillion a number, they said, that would produce sticker shock. They recommended a maximum $825 billion, a figure, one leading House Democrat said, made from a political perspective, not for economic reasons. The incoming administration and Democratic leaders assumed that, as usual, the number would be bid up by Congress. They didn’t anticipate the new realities because they hadn’t been acted on yet. Those who have argued that the number should have been higher didn’t have to deliver the votes. After hearing out economists, who recommended the stimulus be $800 million to $1.3 trillion staggering amounts at the time the administration recommended about $800 billion. Obama’s political advisers had argued for far less. A sub-myth has grown that chief economic adviser Lawrence Summers blocked a memo to the president Rosetta Stone Chinsese Software
from the new chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Christine Romer, which called for more than a trillion dollars in stimulus. But this never happened. Summers knew better than to try to block anybody’s memo to Obama, because Obama wouldn’t tolerate it. In fact, contrary to the view of many that Summers was Robert Rubin redux, he has been a consistent champion of more stimulus. But he also recognized political realities.