Barack Obama, our new president, comes into the White House with some of the biggest challenges to face the presidency since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. Massive unemployment hit Roosevelt, as well as nearly total bank closings. Roosevelt proposed a huge recovery program and Obama is no different. Both addressed the needs of the unemployed and business - farms and the loss of homes by middle income families. Other than this broad-brush picture, what will president Obama do in this present context?
Obama is focused on domestic issues within the U.S., yet what is happening overseas will cost the country huge increases in the national debt, now estimated to be $1.2 trillion. He intends to add to this legacy with an estimated trillion dollar spending for his recovery package. The Obama plan will overspend the national budgeted income by that amount.
So far, there seems to be little response from the public about this proposal. There seems to be a level of shock in the country that is a combination of fear among the employed and panic among the unemployed. Consumer spending is down. According to the U.S. Department of Labor calculations, the Consumer Price Index was down 1.7 percent in November. Food and energy prices were up but on a par with the previous year.
This picture would daunt any newcomer to the presidential office. A different strategy from Obama's would be to contain the costs and fuel the capitalist engines of the country that have been the heart of U.S. domestic practice since the creation of Wall Street. The partner in this has been consumer spending, now estimated to be two-thirds of the nation's Gross Domestic Product (the total market value of all goods and services produced per year).
Instead, Obama's plan is focused on domestic spending, will overspend the budget (the amount of expected revenues), and will likely face Republican criticism if not rage. However, the country is in such danger of flipping over to a dangerous depression and loss of consumer spending needed to keep the country robust, it nearly seems that the new president's plan is not so much new and creative as it is necessary and urgently needed.
One has to wonder if Obama's personality and creative expression is being smothered in this process, but that remains to be seen.