Politics
Obama steps up fear tactics on stimulus package rhetoric
By: Julie Mason
Examiner White House Correspondent
February 5, 2009
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President Barack Obama speaks to the House Democratic Issues Conference Thursday, Feb. 5, 2009 in Williamsburg, Va. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) (AP)
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“The time for talk is over,” Obama told Energy Department employees Thursday. “The time for action is now, because we know that if we do not act, a bad situation will become dramatically worse.”
Drumming up fear to win support is a familiar tactic in the presidency. President Bush used post-9/11 anxieties to pass the Patriot Act and other measures, warning that Americans would be in danger without action.
At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs echoed Obama’s warning, saying that without the stimulus, the nation would lose 5 million more jobs in the next three years. Obama has said he wants to sign the stimulus bill by Feb. 16, Presidents Day.
“I think you’ve heard him speak before of what is going to happen in our economy if we don’t act,” Gibbs said of Obama. “Our failure to act is going to worsen the deficit.”
A risk for the president in using anxiety as a wedge is making the situation worse by creating disproportionate fears about the economy. “You have to walk a fine line,” said Aubrey Jewett, a political scientist at the University of Central Florida. “If the president goes too far in talking about how terrible things are, he runs the risk of getting people to believe it so the economy gets worse.”
Faced with a terrible economy and 8 million Americans out of work, President Reagan in 1981 issued a grim warning in a national address to a joint session of Congress.
“We can no longer procrastinate and hope that things will get better. They will not,” Reagan said. “Unless we act forcefully, and now, the economy will get worse.”
Reagan added, “Can we, who man the ship of state, deny it is somewhat out of control? Our national debt is approaching $1 trillion.”
After seeking bipartisan support for a massive public works bill to spur the economy, Obama is ratcheting back expectations and may eventually settle for a narrow victory on a bill pieced together by warring interests in Congress.
In recent days he has intensified his rhetoric against Republicans, called in state and city leaders to back his plan, and held multiple meetings with lawmakers to keep the project moving.
During his visit to the Energy Department, Obama specifically rejected the tax cuts being pushed by many Republicans as a substitute for his infrastructure spending proposal.
“Those ideas have been tested and they failed,” Obama said. “They’ve taken us from surpluses to an annual deficit of over a trillion dollars and they’ve brought our economy to a halt, and that’s precisely what the election we just had was all about.”
jmason@dcexaminer.com
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