JUST GIVE US THE DEBIT CARDS:

The stimulus that wasn't (L. Brent Bozell III, January 3, 2010, Pittsburgh Tribune)

Before he was even in office in January, Obama's economic advisers Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein issued a report on the economic situation. If nothing was done, they claimed, the unemployment rate would keep rising, reaching 9 percent in early 2010. But if the nation embarked on a fiscal stimulus of $787 billion, the unemployment rate was predicted to remain under 8 percent.

So the Congress passed this massive spending plan, but unemployment rose above the danger zone that these Obama advisers predicted if the spending plan did not pass. [...]

Harvard economists Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna recently conducted a comprehensive analysis for the National Bureau of Economic Research. They looked at large changes in fiscal policy in 21 nations. They identified 91 episodes since 1970 in which policy moved to stimulate the economy. They then compared the interventions that succeeded with robust growth and those that failed. The results were crystal clear. Successful stimulus depended almost entirely on cuts in business and income taxes. Failed stimulus occurs mostly with a strategy of increases in government spending.

Is it really rocket science to suggest businesses will not go on a hiring binge when the liberal agenda in Washington -- on health care, cap and trade and other tax-spend-and-regulate plans -- creates so much heartburn about whether businesses can make a profit? The word "profit" is almost an obscenity in the hallways of Team Obama. It's suggested that the times are too hard for business to seek profits now -- which guarantees more months of stagnant employment ahead.