Obama Pretends That He Underestimated The Crisis

Barack Obama's advisors want us to believe that he did not know that revenues were going to be weak when he wrote the FY 2010 budget earlier this year.

Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, said in a POLITICO interview that the administration — like many independent economists — did not fully anticipate the severity and pace of this recession. She said the White House will be updating its official forecasts.

Another challenge was that the slowdown “was going from a relatively normal recession into
something much worse, and we were at a pivot point, if not a turning point,” Romer said.

"Relatively normal recession"? That was not what Obama was saying at the time. The focal point of the last two months of his campaign (besides "Yes, We Can" rhetoric) was discussion of the worst crisis since the Great Depression. Once elected, he used the severity of the crisis to claim that we needed a massive expansion of government spending and power. Here is him speaking on the topic as President-elect:



There are only two answers to this apparant contradiction. He was either playing up the severity of the crisis to increase the government's control over the economy (as his Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel said, "you never waste a crisis.") Or, more likely, he downplayed the severity during his budget because he knew there was no way to appease his deficit hawk AND liberal progressive supporters at once, and showing that he could expand health care and stifle growth with Cap-and-Trade while still working the post-recession budget back towards stability was the closest he could get.

The fact of the matter is, tough decisions will need to be made concerning the deficit, and hopefully the President will stop playing coy and start thinking about what his choices will be.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/24899.html#ixzz0LGAv87Vx&C