C-Poll

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January 9, 2009

Our country can't afford another FDR

To deal with the current financial unpleasantness, president-elect Obama seems determined to take his inspiration from Franklin Roosevelt, whose basic philosophy was that the government could suck massive amounts of money out of the economy and then spend our country out of the Great Depression.

On Thursday, Obama insisted that
only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe. Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy...
Five years ago, UCLA researchers concluded that FDR's policies actually prolonged the Depression by as much as seven years.

As Pat Buchanan noted today, even FDR's Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau admitted in 1939 the near complete failure of the president's attempts to revive the economy:
We are spending more money than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. ... I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. ... I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... and an enormous debt, to boot.
Honestly... can our country survive the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt?

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