According to the old adage, “If it aint broke, don’t fix it.”
Well, we are now 3½ years into the Obama administration and I think it’s safe to say that the American economy is broken. In fact, considering that the GDP grew at an anemic 1.9% during the first quarter of this year, one might go as far as to say that it’s on life support. The question remains how best to fix it and who to hire to do the job correctly.
On January 20, 2009, when President Barack Obama was sworn into office, unemployment stood at 7.8%. It has not dipped below 8% since, despite his glowing projections to the contrary.
Obama’s economic advisors convinced him – or was it the other way around? – that passing the $800 billion stimulus package would rescue our economy from the abyss. Instead, this mother of all pork barrel spending programs was nothing more than an expensive honeymoon present to the public sector employees and private sector unions that helped elect him. In fact, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act spent almost $250,000 for each new job that it created and many of them were temporary in nature.
Today, 12.7 million Americans are unemployed and if the labor participation rates from 2009 are factored into the equation, the real unemployment number stands at 10.9%. Add in those workers who are under-employed and the figure climbs to more than 15%.
Let me return to my life support analogy for a moment. I serve as a volunteer chaplain at a local medical center and, occasionally, I hear a cry over the intercom calling “Code Blue.” In hospital lingo, that means that a patient is “crashing.” Near death, they need the appropriate medical care and they need it now.
Not once since I have been volunteering have I seen a cafeteria worker or a maintenance man answer the Code Blue alert. On the contrary, the people that respond are highly trained doctors and nurses. They have spent years studying and training for such an event and more often than not, their experience and expertise pays off. Simply put, lives are saved.
Across America today, an economic Code Blue is sounding loud and clear. The question facing voters is which candidate is best prepared to save the patient.
Do we want to renew the contract of Dr. Obama, whose patients have a tendency of dying on the table? Or do we entrust the American economy to a successful businessman and entrepreneur with a proven track record in the private sector?
I know that if it were me or one of my family members on the operating table, I would want sure-handed Dr. Romney holding the scalpel.
