What was that about Caterpillar?
Remember when Barack Obama said that Caterpillar, who had just laid off thousands of workers, was going to rehire some of those works because the stimulus was passed? And then the Caterpillar President came out and basically said that he couldn’t guarantee that they would rehire any of those workers?
Guess who was correct in that difference of opinion?
If you guessed the guy who actually runs the Caterpillar company, you’d be correct.
Caterpillar Inc. on Tuesday announced plans to lay off more than 2,400 employees at five plants in Illinois, Indiana and Georgia as the heavy equipment maker continues to cut costs amid the global economic downturn.
Glad to see that stimulus is allowing Caterpillar to rehire some of those employees. This just means they have even more people to rehire when the stimulus actually kicks in…right?
If you forgot this whole ordeal Ace of Spades has the context including the Obama quote from February when he said Caterpillar would rehire.
Obama continued his quest for bipartisanship today in the only way he knows how, by claiming the people who don’t like his budget don’t have an alternative and are “just saying no.”
President Barack Obama on Tuesday accused critics of his $3.6 trillion budget proposal of taking a “just say no” approach to his plan and offering few ideas of their own.
“If there are members of Congress who object to specific policies and proposals in this budget then I ask them to be ready and willing to propose constructive alternative solutions,” Obama said. “‘Just say no’ is the right advice to give your teenagers about drugs. It is not an acceptable response to whatever economic policies are proposed by the other party.”
“Constructive alternative solutions,” that’s exactly what the GOP has been doing this entire time. They offered up a “constructive alternative” to the stimulus and no one listened to them. They’ve offered up some decent proposals for health care and other new government programs that Obama is pining to install.
However, what Obama doesn’t understand is sometimes government needs to “just say no.” Government is not the answer for everything, I know that jibes with Obama’s beliefs, but it’s true. If the government knew how to “just say no” we wouldn’t be sitting on $10+ trillion of debt. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner pointed to “will” as the key attribute that will get us out of this economic mess. Geithner wasn’t referring to the will of the people, he was referring to the will of government.
Government will not get us out of this economic mess, they got us into it. Obama said that “just say no” is the kind of language parents should use when teaching their kids about drugs (advice, by the way, that Obama didn’t take), but it’s also the kind of language that the government needs to learn.
Then we wouldn’t be passing on trillions of dollars of debt to generations whose parents haven’t even been born yet.
–jb
