Friendly Fire Shows Obama Losing Focus

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Friendly Fire Shows Obama Losing Focus: by Michael Barone

"We did not have a housing bubble collapse because we don't have a national health insurance program. We don't have toxic waste clogging the balance sheets of the banks and other financial institutions because of carbon emissions. The Bush tax cuts were not a proximate cause of the giant public debt being run up under the Toxic Assets Relief Program or the 2009 stimulus package.

And, as Galston points out, the New Deal doesn't provide a precedent for the Obama budget. In his first months in office, Franklin Roosevelt concentrated on repairing a financial system that was in much worse shape than ours is today, with most banks closed. Roosevelt got most of them open and running again.

It was a couple of years later that the programs we remember the New Deal for were passed —"

We must begin to explain to Obama supporters and on-the-fencers that this guy is playing a shell game with the American people.

Smoot-Hawley, Anyone?

It is widely recognized that the passage of the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930 helped turn things from bad to worse at the beginning of the Great Depression...

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Buy American, Buy Depression: "The new administration watered down a protectionist 'Buy American' provision in the Senate stimulus bill and hoped all sides would go away happy. But they won't, as the European Union envoy to the U.S. explains."

The Buy America provisions of the stimulus package have little chance of doing any good, but great potential to do great harm. Thanks, Congress, for learning nothing from history.